Archive for May, 2012

From hero to zero

Monday, May 14th, 2012

All in the space of ten days. That my friends is the sad story of Scott Thompson.

Here is a guy presumed to be at the pinnacle of his career after having successfully led PayPal for several years. A knight in shining armor who was going to make history by saving Yahoo from the doldrums. There he was confidently slashing, restructuring and strategizing at Yahoo until the past caught up with him.

A seemingly innocuous claim of a CS degree from 30+ years ago was all it took to bring him down.

What a shame! In one fell swoop, everything the man has done for three decades is out the window. All that matters are the headlines screaming everywhere that he lied about his degree. People are cracking jokes at his expense all over the place. Yesterday at Tiecon 2012, I heard resume padding jokes no fewer than half a dozen times.

The higher they are, the harder they fall …

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Everyone wants to be Steve Jobs

Monday, May 14th, 2012

Thanks to Walter Isaacson relentlessly peddling the Steve Jobs story through any and all means possible, a lot of folks are walking around thinking they too can be Steve. Walter is selling a pipe dream that anyone can be a Steve Jobs by simply following a formula and there are plenty of people buying this pipe dream.

The Steve wannabes go around lecturing others about building the perfect product or throw out pithy statements like “I don’t think Steve would have accepted this”.

I have news for all the Steve Jobs posers out there. Try as hard as they may, they will not even come close to being like Steve.

Steve Jobs did not spend his life trying to be someone else. While I’m sure he learned plenty from others, he achieved his tremendous successes by being himself.

So the next time you’re in a meeting with someone who thinks they’re Steve, be sure to ask if they can get you a discount at the Apple store :-)

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