60% of Yahoo! Workers Want CEO Scott Thompson Fired

My company WikiOrgCharts conducted a small survey of Yahoo! workers yesterday. Some of the results and comments are reported in this Venturebeat article by Rocky Agrawal. Nearly 60% of people who work at Yahoo! believe that CEO Scott Thompson should resign according to an e-mail survey of Yahoo! employees. A majority of workers also want Tim Morse, the company's CFO to assume the top job permanently.

The sentiment amounts to stark vote of no confidence from rank and file Yahooers of the new chief executive who was recruited months ago from Paypal. Thompson said on his CV and in Yahoo!'s fillings with the SEC that he had a Computer Science degree when in fact he did not.

“I'm appalled by the lack of integrity and honesty displayed by Scott Thompson who apparently isn't even willing to apologize for his misrepresentations,” said one respondent writing in a comments section that formed part of the survey. “All he aplogized for was the disruption this whole affair has caused thus far but not for the fact that he lied in the first place. ”

Other Yahoo! employees criticized the company's Board of Directors for allowing the situation to fester, “The subsequent lack of board action (or at least slow impending action) to remove Mr Thompson will demonstrate that we really do need a new board and new leadership that employees and industry can genuinely look-to for inspiration,” said another survey taker.

The attitudes and comments were gathered from 40 current Yahoo! employees who work at all levels

Goodbye Scott Say Yahooers

of the company and in a variety of positions who responded to the “Yahoo! Employee Happiness” survey. WikiOrgCharts.com is a web site I founded that allows users to build crowdsourced corporate organization. It conducted the survey by e-mailing more than 1,000 Yahoo! workers that are in its database. This exercise demonstrates another way we can gather corporate intelligence. By sides constructing org charts we can an inside view into what employees in a particular company are saying.

In addition to asking company employees about the fate of their fibbing CEO, repondents were also asked about who should succeed Thompson if he was fired and how long they themselves would stay at Yahoo!.

The majority of Yahooers surveyed, 41%, said that CFO Tim Morse should be made the CEO. Morse held the reins at Yahoo! temporarily this year when the company's Board of Directors dismissed then CEO Carol Bartz. If he doesn't want the job insiders are rooting for Ross Levinsohn Yahoo!'s Head of Global Media. Also suggested was Dr. Werner Vogels, CTO of Amazon.com – someone who does have a CS degree.

Yahoo! Workers Want Out

In terms of their own tenure of the company, nearly half the workers say that they are headed for the exit door. Twelve percent of those surveyed said they planned to leave the company this month. Another 36% of those surveyed expected to leave Yahoo! within a year. The remainder said that they planned to leave within two to three years or that they had not plans to leave at all.

Notwithstanding the negative sentiment Thompson has his supporters. “The media is blowing this out of proportion,” said one repsondent. “Leave Yahoo! Alone.”