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exits
software as a disservice
Etelos gets rid of CEO -- and headquarters, too?
A truism of PR: Get all the bad news out at once. Etelos, a startup Web-applications marketplace, fired its CEO, Jeff Garon, last week, but didn't bother to tell shareholders until Wednesday. Founder Danny Kolke, the company's CTO, has taken back control for now. But that's not all: A tipster tells us the company may be closing its San Mateo headquarters and relocating to the company's Renton, Wash. office. The move seems sudden: Garon's last blog post, dated September 1, is titled, "Remember what can be replaced." He didn't include himself on the list. More »
corrections
MSN exec Jeff Dossett actually not crazy enough to join Yahoo
Earlier, BoomTown reported that MSN exec Jeff Dossett would leave the company and possibly soon join Yahoo, where his longtime friend and fellow Microsoft alumna Joanne Bradford already works. Not true, says a Microsoft flack, who tells us: "Jeff Dossett is leaving his position as MSN’s US Executive Producer to seek other opportunities within Microsoft." So either Swisher got it wrong, or Yahoo got outbid for Dossett's services at the last minute. Given Swisher's red phone access to Yahoo's inner sanctum, we're guessing the latter is true. We haven't spoken to Dossett, who once climbed Mount Everest to raise awareness for AIDS and HIV in Africa, but we imagine if we did he'd say something like: "Join Yahoo, now? Too risky."
exits
Ex-Yahoo making good doing same job elsewhere
There are plenty of entrepreneurs with brilliant ideas at Yahoo. They just have to leave the company before they can do anything about them. Take Ex-Yahoo Travel general manager Yen Lee. He left the company a year ago and founded travel search engine UpTake. After a $4 million first round in December 2007, he's just landed another $10 million. Trinity Ventures and Shasta Ventures led the round, which follows UpTake's $4 million first round last December. The difference between UpTake and Lee's old gig running Yahoo Travel? UpTake's focus is content from third-party sites like TripAdvisor, Expedia and yes, Yahoo Travel. Which of course means UpTake would fit quite nicely with Yahoo president Sue Decker's whole "open" strategy for Yahoo. Perhaps what she's really holding open is the door to the exit.
exits
IDG loses PC World and Macworld publisher Michael Carroll
Michael Carroll, a twenty-year veteran of technology publisher IDG who served as SVP and group publisher of both PC World and Macworld, has resigned, according to a source. The departure comes after a round of layoffs, the departure from PC World of Editor-in-Chief Harry McCracken and, our source says, considerable churn in the executive ranks: More »
exits
Carly Fiorina disappeared from media by McCain campaign?
Looks like we might not be hearing from Republican Party apparatchik Carly Fiorina about how awesome the party's presidential ticket is any time soon. The former Hewlett-Packard CEO was asked by a St. Louis radio host if she felt vice presidential nominee Sarah Palin had the experience to run a major company like HP, and Fiorina replied "No, I don't. But you know what? That's not what she's running for." When she was later asked about that statement, she replied that presidential nominee John McCain wasn't capable of running a large company, either — but then neither is Democratic nominee Barack Obama or his running mate Joe Biden, in Fiorina's opinion. I, for one, appreciate Fiorina's optimistic assessment, since the current president promised to run the nation like a company back in 2000, and we all know how that turned out.
exits
Chadrick loves looking for work (also: new Valleywag mascot needed!)
Chadrick, Chadrick, Chadrick. Most of all, we loved saying his name. Chadrick Baker, the virtual-worlds enthusiast Valleywag plucked from obscurity to be our mascot, has been fired from his day job. We think. He should have known better than to bite the digitally furry hand that feeds him. After Chadwick called a competitor — we're not sure, we don't follow the fancy 3D game worlds he runs in — a "hack" in a barely read interview, his CEO, Peter Haik, had to step in and disown Baker's comments. After Haik emailed the company Baker dissed and said he couldn't be sorry enough for what had been said, we hear he took all his apologies one step further and let Baker go. More »
rumormonger
Insider alleges massive turnover at LinkedIn
LinkedIn's jobs page gives off the impression that life at the business-networking website is one nonstop Rock Band jam session. But a clearly disgruntled, entertainingly foulmouthed tipster says that backbiting is the real office entertainment of choice. The company's operations department is "like a fucking morgue" after a "housecleaning," he says. Lloyd Taylor, the company's vice president of technical operations, a splashy hire from Google last year, seems to have generated more than his fair share of complaints. In company meetings, CEO Dan Nye and founder Reid Hoffman describe the ruckus as "culture changes." Embarrassingly for a company which says it helps employers vet job candidates and is trying to break into the recruiting business, these problems sound less like culture clashes and more like plain old bad hires. The tip: More »
Monty Widenius
Was MySQL creator's resignation rumor just a negotiating tactic?
We'd heard, on good authority, that Monty Widenius, creator of the popular open-source database MySQL, the foundation of most modern Web apps, had quit Sun, not long after the server maker's $1 billion purchase of his company. MySQL's designated community panderer, Kaj Arnö, muddied the waters with a maybe-he-will-maybe-he-won't blog post. Now, at last, via Infoworld, an explanation: Widenius is negotiating with Sun for a new role at MySQL. Which raises the question: Was he ever really planning to leave, or was he just telling people that to see how his corporate overseers would react?
death watch
