Technology Career News and Advice by FINS.com

What the IPO Controversy Means for Facebook's Culture

Fri, 25 May 2012 10:14:34 -0500

As Facebook prepared to go public in recent months, company executives worried what impact the IPO would have on employee morale. They worried that employees would become so preoccupied watching their fortunes grow that they'd lose focus on work.

As it turns out, the bigger distraction may be the growing controversy over the stock's poor performance. It's been trading at about $32 a share this morning, down from the offering price of $38 a share. That means that Facebook employees have lost an average of $844,000 each since the company went public last week, the New York Post reports. The stock's lackluster showing could impede Facebook's ability to recruit the best engineers if new employees don't believe their stock options will pay out.

The Wall Street Journal reported earlier in the week that Facebook employees were barely talking about the IPO controversy or the stock price. Employees may be taking the long view, noting that companies like Google and Amazon didn't have huge pops at first, but eventually delivered big returns for investors and employees.

In the short term, though, the IPO debacle continues to raise questions about fairness in the financial world. As has been reported many places, Facebook executives gave research analysts private guidance on the company's financial situation. The Wall Street Journal reported that two of Facebook's underwriters, Goldman Sachs and J.P. Morgan Chase helped hedge fund traders short, or bet against, the company's stock.

Reports associating Facebook with the conflict-of-interest-laden dealings of bankers contradicts the company's image as "the people's company." Mark Zuckerberg himself has voted with his feet. He officially became a billionaire this week when he sold 30 million of his shares. Now his wealth isn't just on paper.

Mountain View, Illinois (WSJ)

The "Google-ization" of Motorola Mobility has begun. Not only has Googler Dennis Woodside taken over as chief executive, Motorola's chief financial officer, chief operation officer, and strategy chief are also out.

Failure (Boston.com)

38 Studios, the video game company founded by former major league baseball player Curt Schilling, has laid off its entire staff of 400. The company recently missed a $1 million payment on a $75 million loan guarantee it received from the state of Rhode Island in exchange for creating jobs.

Dividend (AllThingsD)

Apple is giving its employees a new and unusual perk: a $2.65 per share dividend on their stock units. Chief Executive Tim Cook has declined the cash, though, forfeiting $75 million.

Updates (Seattle Times)

Amazon Chief Executive Jeff Bezos says he will spend $52 million to install air conditioners in his company's warehouses. The company has been criticized for its labor practices.

On the Run (Gizmodo)

John McAfee, founder of McAfee Antivirus, tells the incredible true tale of how he was arrested and jailed in Belize. A gang suppression unit, a warrant for a meth lab, and an illegal firearm all come into play.

Couch Surfing (Cnet)

This is how Eric Simons, 19, squatted for two months at the Palo Alto, Calf. headquarters of AOL as he worked on his start-up. He slept on the company's couches, ate its cereal, and worked out in its gym before he was caught and kicked out.

Biting Back (AllThingsD)

We've noticed a bunch of positive stories about Zynga's workplace culture, which struck us as the company trying to beat back at reports on how awful it is to work there. Now Zynga is having two of its engineers host an online Q&A session to respond to an ex-employee who criticized the company recently.

Call Back (Bloomberg Businessweek)

If your start-up makes it big, you can expect a call from your alma mater's alumni association. Schools are forging relationships with start-up founders early so they can get a new library built once the graduate makes it big.

Buzz Around the Office

Nine-Year-Old Shames School with Blog (Gawker)

A nine-year-old's blog prompted her school cafeteria to start offering healthier food options.

List of the Day: Focusing at Work

Problems at home may threaten to derail your life at work. Don't let them.

1. Adhere to a specific schedule or to-do list.

2. Don't vent to colleagues. Stewing can make problems worse.

3. Don't take personal calls at work.

(Source: CBS Money Watch)

H-P Cuts Jobs to Invest in Cloud & Data

Thu, 24 May 2012 09:44:49 -0500

Hewlett-Packard confirmed earlier reports that it will lay off 27,000 employees, or about 8% of its workforce. The cuts will occur over the course of a couple of years and be completed by 2014.

H-P says it will use the cost savings -- as much as $3.5 billion a year -- to invest in cloud computing and big data analytics. The focus on these two new areas of technology in which H-P lags highlights the challenges in front of the company. H-P is one of those legacy companies that still makes things: personal computer, printers, servers, etc.

Compare H-P to a company like Facebook, which makes just one thing -- Facebook.com -- and earns virtually all of its money from advertising. Facebook generated $3.71 billion in revenue last year, compared to H-P's $127.24 billion. H-P has 350,000 employees; Facebook has about 3,000. Yet Facebook's market capitalization, $85 billion, is double that of H-P's, The Wall Street Journal reports.

About a third of the cuts to H-P's workforce will happen in the U.S., Bloomberg reports. The enterprise services group is expected to be hit hard, but no unit is completely safe, Chief Financial Officer Cathie Lesjak tells Bloomberg. This isn't the first time H-P has undertaken huge layoffs. In 2005, it cut 14,500 employees, 24,600 employees in 2008, and 9,000 cuts in 2010, the San Jose Mercury News reports.

Inside Information (WSJ)

That big banks like Morgan Stanley informed their best clients about Facebook's diminished revenue forecasts and not the general public is not only legal, but expected. Still, some securities lawyers say the rules should be changed to create a more even distribution of information.

Teaching Biz (TechCrunch)

Cornell University has hired Greg Pass, the former chief technology officer of Twitter, to be founding entrepreneurial officer at its New York City campus. He'll be in charge of campus outreach to the business sector.

Let Off (WSJ)

Google did not violate Oracle patents, a federal jury found yesterday. The verdict is something of a vindication for Google, which said Oracle was trying to cash in on its successful Android operating system.

New Product (Digits)

Yahoo unveiled its own new Web browser yesterday, which it has dubbed "Axis." We'll see if boldly stepping into the browser wars can help restore morale at the battered company.

New King (Fortune)

Apple Chief Executive Tim Cook is bonding with employees over lunch, dropping by to hang out in the company cafeteria. Just another way Cook is changing the firm's culture from that under the late Steve Jobs.

Hey, Larry (AllThingsD)

Google Chief Executive Larry Page has been very chatty lately. He went on Charlie Rose this week to talk about his vision for the company and then went to London where he said that YouTube's revenue has doubled every year for the last four years.

Acquired (AllThingsD)

Seagate, the hard drive maker, will acquire consumer hard drive maker LaCie for $186 million.

Gone (WSJ)

Another week, another Research In Motion executive on his way out. This time it's Patrick Spence, a 14-year veteran of the company who most recently served as the London-based head of global sales.

Buzz Around the Office

World's Longest Mustache (BBC)

The Guinness World Records holder for the world's longest mustache (4.29 meters or 14 feet) offers grooming tips.

List of the Day: Putting It Out There

You may be forced to social network sooner rather than later, but don't make these mistakes.

1. Complain all the time on all your networks.

2. Share too much personal information.

3. Post inappropriate pictures.

(Source: Forbes)

HP To Lay Off 27K Workers

Wed, 23 May 2012 15:38:30 -0500

Hewlett-Packard Co. announced plans on Wednesday to lay off approximately 27,000 workers, or 8% of its workforce, in a cost-cutting move.

In a statement delivered alongside the company's second fiscal quarter results, H-P said the move would result in annualized savings between $3 billion and $3.5 billion by the end of its 2014 fiscal year.

"H-P expects to use the savings to boost investment in innovation around its three areas of strategic focus: cloud, big data and security, as well as in other segments that offer attractive growth potential," the company's statement read.

As part of the restructuring, H-P said it will incur a pretax charge of $1.7 billion in the current fiscal year, with additional charges of $1.8 billion through fiscal 2014.

This story first appeared on MarketWatch.com

Musk Looks Beyond Internet to Space Travel

Wed, 23 May 2012 10:06:35 -0500

By the time Elon Musk and his co-founders sold PayPal to eBay in 2002, Musk had accumulated a $170 million fortune, the New York Times writes in a profile of the 40-year-old entrepreneur. He took $160 million of that and invested it into three new technology ventures that had nothing to do with the Internet: an electric car company, a space flight company and a solar energy company.

Some questioned the wisdom of betting so big on companies that, well, made stuff. But this week Musk has accomplished two very impressive feats. First, his all-electric sports cars have been approved by regulators for sale to the public. Musk's company, Tesla, now can begin competing with Nissan and General Motors.

Early yesterday morning, Musk's other company, SpaceX, launched its first rocket into space. It's headed toward the International Space Station with a small cargo that includes meal packets and a laptop computer, reports the Times.

If all goes smoothly, SpaceX will begin transporting more cargo to the ISS as part of a $1.6 billion contract with NASA. Private companies are aiming to help NASA transport food, fuel and, eventually, astronauts. But the long-term vision of entrepreneurs like Musk is to usher in a new age of privately funded space exploration.

If he's successful, Musk could reignite passion about science and technology among those unimpressed with consumer Internet innovations like Facebook and Twitter. TechCrunch poses the question of who had the best week ever: Musk or Mark Zuckerberg, who is now married and worth more than the combined GDP of Afghanistan, Nepal and Jamaica. "In my book, rockets and fast cars win every time," Matt Burns writes. (NYT)

Repercussions (Bloomberg)

Regulators are beginning to probe what went wrong with the Facebook IPO. While details are still unclear, the big picture appears to be that large institutional investors had more information about Facebook's revenue forecasts than did small, retail investors, which created a split in demand.

Lawsuit (WSJ)

Venture capitalist Ellen Pao is suing her employer, Kleiner Perkins Caufield Byers, for sexual harassment. She says harassment and gender discrimination are endemic at the firm. Kleiner says the suit is without merit.

New Sheriff (Bits)

Google's $12.5 billion acquisition of Motorola Mobility has been completed. Motorola Chief Executive Sanjay Jha is stepping down and will be replaced by Google executive Dennis Woodside.

Gone (FINS)

Layoffs at AOL continue with 20 Patch employees getting the ax. Patch, the local journalism venture AOL launched with much fanfare, has become a point of contention between the company's executives.

Deal Making (AllThingsD)

SAP, the German software maker, has acquired Mountain View, Calif.-based Ariba for $4.3 billion. Ariba, which makes cloud-based enterprise software, has about 2,600 employees.

Foreign Students (Washington Wire)

A bipartisan group of U.S. senators has drafted legislation that would allow more foreign students with postgraduate degrees in science and math to stay in the country. The immigration issue is a toxic one in an election year, but the cross-aisle support is an encouraging sign.

Teflon (NYT)

Google is responsible perhaps for "the single greatest breach in the history of privacy," a German official says. Yet when it has avoided disclosing information to European and American regulators, it has faced very little public criticism.

Early Employee (Business Insider)

Meet Amanda Wixted, the game designer who can't help but get recruited to the hottest companies. She was employee number 75 at Zynga and turned down an offer to work for Instagram.

Buzz Around the Office

Panda-Suited Conservationists (22 Words)

Chinese researchers dress in panda suits to help a 21-month-old panda and its mother transfer to their new home in the wild.

List of the Day: Undermining Yourself

You won't need enemies if you do these things to yourself in the office. You'll damage your own career.

1. End every declarative sentence with a question mark.

2. Come to work to bond, not succeed.

3. Work for less than what you're worth.

(Source: Forbes)

AOL's Patch To Ax 20

Tue, 22 May 2012 14:30:26 -0500

AOL's Patch.com, the online local-news network whose high costs have made it a lightning rod for criticism of AOL's strategy, is laying off about 20 people as part of a broader restructuring.

Patch will consolidate its four geographic zones into three by integrating the South and East zones, allowing it cut some managers. No sites will be closed or merged and no local editors or ad managers will be affected. Patch, which has nearly 1,000 full-time journalists, announced the restructuring in a note to staff Tuesday morning.

"After implementing a more efficient field structure earlier this year, we have seen an impressive boost in both traffic and revenue," said Jon Brod, chief executive of Patch. "With an eye on our overarching business goals, streamlining our field management structure not only gives us additional operating leverage, but also allows us to better serve our users and out communities. This is the next step in Patch's strategy to win."

The high costs of keeping Patch running has become the centerpiece of dissident investor Starboard Value LP's campaign against AOL Chief Executive Tim Armstrong's strategy for the Internet company. Armstrong has promised to cut costs at Patch this year and get it to profitability by next year.

After expanding its presence from 30 towns to more than 850 towns in the past two years, Patch's annual loss has soared to more than $100 million--more than twice AOL's operating profit in 2011.

Starboard, which is running a proxy contest to win several seats on AOL's board at next month's annual meeting, argues Patch should be closed, sold or put into a joint venture where someone else covers some of the costs. Armstrong isn't backing off.

"Patch continues to deliver on its original mission and is on the right path for success in 2012 and beyond," he said in a statement. "AOL is executing a bold turnaround and Patch addresses a large and exciting market for our shareholders."

The cuts are the latest move made by Armstrong pre-empting Starboard's criticisms. In April AOL struck a deal to sell a portfolio of patents to Microsoft Corp. for $1.1 billion, shortly after Starboard had highlighted the patents as an underutilized asset. AOL also decided to return to shareholders all the cash raised from the sale, as Starboard demanded, after initially saying it would only return part of the money.

This story first appeared on WSJ.com

Bankers Blamed for Facebook IPO Debacle

Tue, 22 May 2012 09:41:57 -0500

Facebook was supposed to be the IPO of the decade, but it ended up being too big for its own good. Shares dropped 11% yesterday as investors sold off their stock and the company's bankers quit propping up the share price.

Facebook's lead underwriter, Morgan Stanley, is getting the lion's share of blame for the stock's disappointing performance. Morgan Stanley bankers ignored advice from colleagues who said they were overestimating demand in the days leading up to the IPO, DealBook reports. The bank went ahead anyway and upped the share price and number of shares being offered.

This morning, Reuters reports that a Morgan Stanley analyst reduced his revenue forecasts for the company just before the IPO. The bank relayed the news to clients and it may have contributed to weaker-than-expected demand. The stock was down 6% in early trading today.

Some are criticizing Facebook executives as well, suggesting that the hype surrounding the company led them to magical thinking. Investors, too, were caught off guard by weak demand. When it became apparent that the stock wasn't going anywhere, many began selling yesterday.

"It's a combination of Zuckerberg's ego for that $100 billion market cap, and the shareholders selling who wanted an exit," an analyst tells Bloomberg. "Somehow it just missed them that this was mispriced."

Charity (FINS)

Google is loaning $10 million worth of office space in its New York headquarters to Cornell University. The partnership may raise new questions about how close is too close for universities and businesses.

Scheme (San Jose Mercury News)

SAP executive Thomas Langenbach had it all figured out. He'd replace the bar codes on boxes of Legos, buy them at a huge discount from Target, and sell them on eBay. It earned him $30,000, police say, and a rap sheet.

Overseas Diversity (Times of India)

IBM is reportedly cutting staff in the U.S., but in India it's on a mission to hire more women for leadership and rank-and-file positions.

Lawsuit (NYT)

European Union regulators have given Google an ultimatum: change the way you do search or potentially be slapped with an antitrust lawsuit. The EU is trying to get the issue resolved before market forces make questions about Google's dominance moot.

Get Money (WSJ)

Apple Chief Executive Tim Cook made $378 million year, the highest salary of any executive last year and in any year since The Wall Street Journal began surveying executive compensation in 2006. The second-highest paid tycoon last year was Oracle's Larry Ellison, who made $76 million.

Systems of Control (Business Insider)

Slovenian philosopher, public intellectual and Marxist, Slavoj Zizek, says that office perks like ping pong tables and free food are used to oppress employees.

Across the Pond (AllThingsD)

King.com, the social gaming company, has hired Electronic Arts executive producer Catharina Lavers Mallet to head its new London office. The company will be hiring 40 new employees.

Getting There (Google)

This is what happens when you click "send" on an email. It travels through routers and data centers and, of course, tubes.

Buzz Around the Office

Sea Nomad Rides Shark (boingboing)

Photographer James Morgan captures a marine nomad from the dying Bajau ethnic group, riding on the tail of a nurse shark in Indonesia.

List of the Day: Mitigating Boredom at Work

1. Take interesting people out to lunch.

2. Ask your boss questions to find new growth opportunities.

3. Ask for more, and more diverse, work.

(Source: Glassdoor.com)

Google Gives Cornell $10 Million in Free Office Space

Mon, 21 May 2012 14:02:20 -0500

In what appears to be a one-of-a-kind collaboration between academia and industry, Google announced today that it will provide 22,000 square feet of free office space to Cornell University.

The value of the property, located within Google's New York headquarters in Manhattan, is upwards of $10 million, said Chief Executive Larry Page at a press conference announcing the partnership this morning. "It's a significant commitment," he said.

The announcement comes at a time when policy makers, academics and business leaders have begun to reconsider the barriers that have traditionally existed between universities and private enterprises. Cornell University President David Skorton suggested that he sees the collaboration as indicative of a new approach to training students for careers in a competitive economy. He said such partnerships could help the "country to grow itself out of a long recession."

"We need to create a new academic model for this time and this place and this industry," Skorton said. "The key, we believe, is engagement between world class academics and companies and early stage investors. Co-location is critical to connecting academic research and industry in a sort of a mixing bowl and seeing what happens."

Asked if he expected backlash from faculty members questioning such a close relationship between Cornell and Google, Skorton said that it is "definitely a concern." Still, he said, "we're jumping in with both feet in this direction at Cornell." Graduate students who enroll at the New York campus will have both an academic adviser from the faculty and an industry mentor drawn from the business world, he added.

In December, Cornell beat out Stanford University to build a new engineering campus in New York. The campus, which is currently under construction on Roosevelt Island, is expected to open in 2017.

Google has agreed to let Cornell house students and faculty in its building for five-and-a-half years. Cornell will begin moving into the building in July and an undetermined number of students and faculty currently enrolled at Cornell's flagship campus in Ithaca, N.Y., will begin classes there this fall.

Google already has strong relationships with many universities, where it often funds research. The idea to let Cornell reside at Google's New York headquarters grew out of a relationship between Cornell professor and founding dean of the New York campus, Daniel Huttenlocher, and Google Vice President of Research and Special Initiatives Alfred Spector.

The two met when Huttenlocher spent a summer as a visiting professor at Google four years ago, he said in an interview. When Cornell was selected to build the new campus, the two spoke about what Google could do to help. "Space is going to be tight for the next five years. I know you guys are cramped, but what do you think?" Huttenlocher recalled asking Spector.

The announcement also highlighted New York's ascension as a technology hub, a stature that Mayor Michael Bloomberg has invested much time and energy promoting over the last year. In the past year, high-profile Silicon Valley companies like Facebook, Twitter and Zynga have all set up engineering offices in New York. Google opened its office there in 2006, and it is now the company's second-largest engineering campus after its Mountain View, Calif., headquarters.

Mayor Bloomberg noted that the presence of these West Coast companies, along with a vibrant local start-up scene, have catapulted New York past Boston to become second only to Silicon Valley in venture-capital investment. New York, though, isn't satisfied with its runner-up status, Bloomberg said.

"We don't like being second to anybody," he said. "Google, Cornell and NYC tech are going to help us seriously close that gap."

Such proximity to Cornell students could give Google a leg-up in the fierce competition to hire the best technical minds. Asked if Google expects to have an unfair advantage in recruiting, Page joked, "We wish, but I doubt it."

Skorton said that Google has a reputation for openness toward other technology companies and would not expect the company to exert improper influence. "There will be opportunities for students to start up brand new companies, and perhaps work for other established companies," he said. "And of course, we hope somewhere in those ranks will be the next Larry Page."

Page noted that he and Sergey Brin founded Google while Ph.D. students at Stanford University where they received crucial financial and academic support for their ideas. Ironically, Stanford had been the front-runner to build the new engineering campus on Roosevelt Island until it withdrew its bid. Stanford has been both lauded for its openness to the business sector, which has created scores of entrepreneurs and companies, and criticized for failing to insulate its students enough from the temptations of the business world.

The notion of students being shielded from the outside world by the insularity of the university struck many at today's press conference as old fashioned and quaint.

"The distinctions that used to exist no longer exist anymore today," Bloomberg said. "Things are founded in universities and developed by the private sector. That's what America, society, is all about in this day and age."

Write to Joseph Walker at Joseph.Walker@dowjones.com

The Employee Revolt that Doomed Scott Thompson

Mon, 21 May 2012 09:46:27 -0500

Yahoo finally has some good news after suffering through weeks of misfortune. It has cut a deal to sell off its stake in Alibaba Group, the Chinese e-commerce company. Yahoo is selling off about half of its 40% ownership in the company, which will bring in about $4 billion after taxes, The Wall Street Journal reports. Yahoo will use the proceeds to initiate a buyback of its own shares to prop up its flagging stock price. By 2015, Yahoo will most likely sell the rest of its stake in Alibaba Group.

Yahoo has been trying to strike a deal with Alibaba for years. Its stake turned out to be a very profitable asset, worth more than its businesses in the U.S., DealBook reports.

Meanwhile, more details emerged over the weekend about the ousting of former Chief Executive Scott Thompson. Turns out that a mini-revolt among employees and managers contributed to the board pulling support of him, the New York Times reports. Employees in Silicon Valley were mortified that their boss falsely claimed to have a technical degree. "They were saying, 'How can I work for a company that has a C.E.O. who claims to be a computer scientist when he's not? I can't work here if that's true,'" a source tells the Times.

Then Thompson began trying to forge alliances with board members and other executives who would pledge to support him. When one manager declined to back him, Thompson told him not to tell anyone about their talk. One board member interpreted this as Thompson trying to "silence people," the Times reports.

Over the weekend, Thompson, who is fighting thyroid cancer, stepped down from two board positions at Splunk and F5 Networks, Business Insider reports.

Glitch (WSJ)

Facebook went public on Friday, but about a half-hour later than expected. That's because the Nasdaq Stock Market had software problems that kept investors from receiving confirmation of whether their trades went through.

Sputter (Bloomberg)

Once Facebook started trading, though, it never really went anywhere and ended the day just slightly above its opening price of $38. The share price actually dropped below that in early trading today.

Surprise (Associated Press)

Mark Zuckerberg decided to top off his IPO weekend by getting married. Shocked guests thought that they had arrived at Zuckerberg's home to celebrate his girlfriend Priscilla Chan's graduation from medical school. Instead they tied the knot.

Remarks (AllThingsD)

Before Zuckerberg rang the Nasdaq bell Friday morning, he addressed an overflow crowd of employees. "Stay focused and keep shipping," he said.

Hiring Spree (MarketWatch)

Utah's Qualtrics plans to hire 250 new employees after raising $70 million in new venture-capital financing. The company makes online survey and data collection software.

Get Money (Ad Age)

Foursquare has hired its first chief revenue officer. Steven Rosenblatt joins the mobile check-in company from Apple, where he was director of advertising sales and strategy for the mobile ad platform iAd.

Together (Austin American-Statesman)

Start-ups in Austin, Texas, are coming together to find the tech talent that they'd normally be competing over. Each company chips in $5,000 to hire a recruiter to assemble a database of candidates from universities.

Getting It Right (WSJ)

Networking ain't easy. Too often people fail to be specific enough in describing their career ambitions and don't give as good as they get.

Try, Try Again (WSJ)

SpaceX aborted its planned flight into space Saturday. But the company plans to try again on Tuesday as it sends a message that private space companies can act faster than their governmental counterparts.

Buzz Around the Office

Tattoo a Banana (FlavorWire)

Artist Phil Hansen transforms banana skins into canvases, recreating some of the world's most famous works of art with a push pin.

List of the Day: The Last Day

Here's how to spend your last day at a certain job.

1. Wrap up any outstanding assignments.

2. Delete everything off your computer.

3. Go for lunch with your colleagues.

(Source: The Daily Muse)

Facebook Employees Must Spend Wealth Quietly

Fri, 18 May 2012 10:42:18 -0500

Facebook is now a public company. At $38 a share, it is valued at $104 billion, the largest-ever valuation of an American company at the time of its IPO. Regular folks will be able to buy stock starting at 11 a.m. EDT, but the share price is sure to have jumped by then.

Chief Executive Mark Zuckerberg spent last night with his employees in an all-night hackathon, where employees gave him a standing ovation (see photo). Zuckerberg is now richer than Google's Larry Page and Sergey Brin, but don't expect him to brag about it. The Silicon Valley ethos is to enjoy your wealth, but to spend it quietly, the New York Times reports.

Facebook employees with stock in the company have to wait six months before they can sell and beef up their bank accounts with the spoils of the IPO. Some are privately chatting about buying homes, planes and expensive pieces of art. Posting pictures of your new toys on Facebook, though, is forbidden. "The message here is, 'Keep shipping product,' " one Facebook exec tells the Times. "If someone buys a fancy car and posts a picture of it, they get ridiculed and berated."

Cut and Reinvest (FINS via WSJ)

Hewlett-Packard executives have been consumed with a restructuring plan that will eliminate up to 30,000 jobs over an extended period of time. The company does plan to add jobs in certain functions.

Hiring Time (FINS)

Online payments start-up WePay plans to hire as many as 40 new employees over the next 18 months after raising $10 million in venture capital financing. The company is taking on PayPal in the online payments space.

Probe (WSJ)

Regulators are concerned that Groupon stock had an unusual amount of high volume trading right before the company announced positive earnings results that sent its stock price soaring. One blogger has whispered the words, "insider trading."

Trends (TechFlash)

Silicon Valley still has the most tech jobs, but other cities are growing faster. Seattle has had a 43% jump in high-tech workers over the past decade and Washington saw 20.6% growth.

Decrees (AllThingsD)

Ross Levinsohn may only be Yahoo's "interim" chief executive, but he's using his time at the top to consolidate power. Here's the memo explaining that ousted chief executive Scott Thompson's deputies have been replaced with Levinsohn's picks.

Unreal (WSJ)

There are now at least 20 start-ups valued at $1 billion or more by investors. One venture capitalist says that the tech world thinks it's living in a magical place "where all the women are strong, all the men are good-looking, and all the children are above average."

Reflection (Bits)

The Facebook IPO joins a longer line of frenzy over debuts of tech stocks. When Netscape went public in 1995 it was a "trophy" stock that everyone had to have in order to show their faces at cocktail parties.

Buzz Around the Office

48 Things That Will Make You Feel Old (Buzz Feed)

The list includes foods you can no longer buy, what childhood celebs look like now and how old Maggie from the Simpsons would be in real life.

List of the Day: Addressing an Employment Gap

You're going to need to have a story when someone inevitably asks you about your time out of the workforce.

1. Only discuss recent employment gaps.

2. Stay up to speed by taking classes and attending industry workshops.

3. Don't bring it up until they do.

(Source: U.S. News & World Report)

Yahoo's Levinsohn Names Team

Fri, 18 May 2012 08:48:45 -0500

New Yahoo Inc. Chief Executive Ross Levinsohn isn't wasting any time in assembling an executive team to help renew growth at the ailing Internet company.

In a note to employees Thursday, Levinsohn said Mickie Rosen will the head Yahoo's global media and commerce efforts, which includes editorial, business development and partnerships, product design and engineering. He added that Yahoo's commerce-business unit would "return to its original home and report into her." Rosen had previously done a "fantastic job driving our Americas media network," he wrote.

Mollie Spilman, who had run Yahoo's Americas marketing for the last two years, will become chief marketing officer, Levinsohn wrote.

Sam Shrauger, a senior vice president who helped lead the commerce group, will be leaving the company, a Yahoo spokeswoman said. So will Penny Baldwin, who was acting chief marketing officer, after a transition period, she said.

"Please join me in wishing them both well in their future endeavors," Levinsohn wrote.

Levinsohn said Michel Protti would remain his chief of staff, and "will play a vital role in keeping me sane and all of us on track."

Levinsohn was named interim CEO on Sunday, succeeding Scott Thompson, who resigned after four months on the job amid controversy over the disclosure of a misstatement on his academic record. In the note to employees, Levinsohn said Yahoo employees had impressed upon him the need to identify key priorities and exploit the company's talents.

"We have a lot to do," Levinsohn wrote. "The most pressing thing I heard from you is the desire to clearly define our vision and strategy. I promise you we will be transparent and plan to articulate this in the coming weeks."

This story first appeared on WSJ.com.

Write to Don Clark at don.clark@wsj.com

HP Eyes 30K Job Cuts

Thu, 17 May 2012 15:20:19 -0500

The daunting task of restructuring Hewlett-Packard will begin in earnest next Wednesday when the company reports its quarterly earnings. Sources familiar with the company's plans say that Chief Executive Meg Whitman will discuss the opening steps of a company-wide restructuring plan that will include the elimination of about 30,000 jobs.

A report by Business Insider yesterday pegged the range of cuts at HP to between 10% and 15% of its current workforce of 320,000 people. But sources familiar with HP's plans tell AllThingsD that the cuts will be carried out over a relatively long period of time, perhaps a year or more. A report by Bloomberg News puts the target at 25,000. The exact number of cuts, one source told me, is still considered a "moving target" and could grow or shrink.

Additionally, sources say, Whitman will, during a conference call with analysts, portray the cuts as necessary--not to bolster HP's earnings and satisfy shareholders, but rather as a means to make needed investments. On this point, Whitman will be borrowing a bit from the playbook of her short-lived predecessor, former HP CEO Léo Apotheker.

Whitman will argue that many of the cuts made at HP during the five years that Mark Hurd was at its helm were made without corresponding investments in new and growing initiatives. This "cut and reinvest" theme will apply across the company, sources say. The process has been an intense one among HP's senior executive ranks and has, as one source put it, "consumed the company."

Much like what happened at networking giant Cisco Systems, the restructuring will include a combination of voluntary retirement packages, the precise details of which are still under consideration, combined with outright cuts. The target for voluntary retirement, sources tell me, is about 5,000 people.

Brian Marshall, an analyst with ISI, in a May 3 note to clients estimated that a job reduction of about 18,000, amounting to about 5% of HP's workforce would, would save HP in the neighborhood of $1.2 billion and boost year-end earnings per share by about 50 cents, assuming a cost of about $100,000 per employee. "If HP institutes a reduction in force as we expect, we wouldn't be surprised if calendar year 2013 EPS estimates eventually approach $5.00 as the business stabilizes, growth returns in the Jan 2013 quarter and the organization is streamlined," Marshall wrote.

This story first appeared on WSJ.com

WePay to Hire 40, Targets PayPal

Thu, 17 May 2012 15:25:19 -0500

Online payments start-up WePay plans to hire as many as 40 new employees over the next 18 months after raising $10 million in additional venture-capital financing earlier this month. The funding round was led by Ignition Partners.

WePay is trying to capitalize on what it sees as the vulnerabilities of PayPal, the leader in online payments. Co-founder and Chief Operating Officer Rich Aberman said WePay is trying to win customers by offering better customer service and less complicated user functionality. Currently, the majority of the company's users are people who have never tried to accept online payments before.

Based in Palo Alto, the company's 40-person staff has about three sales and marketing employees for every engineer, the 27-year-old Aberman said. On the technical side, they'll be looking to hire "algorithmic academic engineers" and "product design focused engineers," he said.

They're also serious about trying to stick a thorn in PayPal's side. In 2010, the company orchestrated a publicity stunt in front of PayPal's developer conference by placing a 600-pound ice block in front of the conference center. The message was that PayPal often freezes user accounts because they fear fraud. WePay says it takes a more nuanced view of unusual spikes in user activity which allows them to recognize that a merchant is seeing a seasonal sales spike, not illegal activity.

The company likes to hire "craftsman" engineers who take pride in their work and sweat the smallest of details in the features they're working on. "We hire a lot of people who hold themselves to a higher standard than we could even hold them to," Aberman said.

Cash and equity compensation is competitive. The company declined to discuss its revenues.

Write to Joseph Walker at Joseph.Walker@dowjones.com

Why Tech Needs More Philosophers

Thu, 17 May 2012 09:40:26 -0500

Americans are in a desperate mood and somehow we've gotten the idea that if we can all become computer programmers we'll be saved. It's a tempting proposition as unemployment runs high and new college graduates drown in student loan debt. Meanwhile, Facebook is seemingly creating millionaires at every turn, while President Obama calls for more Americans to be trained in science and technology.

But lately a backlash has begun. A New Yorker magazine article recently questioned whether Stanford was shortchanging students by emphasizing technology training and entrepreneurship over a balanced liberal arts education. In the Washington Post today, software start-up guy-turned-academic Vivek Wadhwa writes that Silicon Valley actually needs more humanities graduates, not less.

"I believe humanity majors make the best project managers, the best product managers, and, ultimately, the most visionary technology leaders," Wadhwa writes. The reason, he says, is that pure technologists often get lost in small technical details and in impressing their fellow geeks. People who are versed in the classics, though, may be able to see the bigger picture and create things that have mass appeal.

The obvious example here is Steve Jobs, who actually knew very little about computer programming and credited his interest in philosophy, music and typography with leading to some of Apple's greatest products. "I think our major contribution [to computing] was in bringing a liberal arts point of view to the use of computers," he told NPR in 1996.

But Wadhwa also cites tech entrepreneur Damon Horowitz, who sold his company Aardvark to Google for $50 million. Earlier in his career, Horowitz decided his work as an artificial intelligence researcher was missing something. He left his job and enrolled in a Ph.D. philosophy program at Stanford. He credits the degree with "improved capabilities in strategic vision, creative problem solving and other critical traits." (WaPo)

Switch Teams (AllThingsD)

The latest Amazon exec to jump ship to Groupon is Vinayak Hegde who will become the daily deal company's vice president of engineering. He'll also be heading up Groupon's new Seattle office, which will have 20 employees to start off with.

Selloff (WSJ)

Facebook has upped the amount of shares it's selling in its IPO tomorrow so that early investors like Peter Thiel can cash out. Felix Salmon says the smart money is getting out of the company while the getting is good.

Form and Function (WSJ)

Silicon Valley tech firms have become more conservative in their interior decorating styles. Furniture design firms say that companies want to communicate their unpretentious culture.

Brewing Storm (Business Insider)

Layoffs could be hitting Hewlett-Packard soon, according to a report. The total number could be as many as 30,000.

Get Money (WSJ)

Venture-capital investors have pegged Pinterest's worth at $1.5 billion in a $100 million financing round. The 35-person company has little to no revenue and is unprofitable, but it allows users to organize photos and images online with their friends.

Popularity Contest (LinkedIn Blog)

Of the top 10 most attractive start-ups in Silicon Valley, just one (Pinterest, natch) is on the list. Turns out engineers are still drawn to data and hardware companies like Square, Violin Memory and Palantir.

Settlement (San Jose Mercury News)

Electronic Arts has reached a legal settlement with rival videogame maker Activision Blizzard over accusations that EA improperly poached two of its executives. Terms of the agreements weren't disclosed, but Activision had been seeking damages of $400 million.

Pre-Party (AllThingsD)

No doubt Facebook employees will be spending Friday night celebrating the company's IPO. But Thursday night they'll be doing what they're always doing: programming away at a hackathon.

Buzz Around the Office

Web Inspired Street Art (Flavorwire)

Street art projects incorporate well known web icons like the Facebook "Like" button and Google Maps markers into real life.

List of the Day: Common Courtesy

You shouldn't do these things in any workplace, but doing them in a small office will be especially damaging.

1. Gossiping.

2. Passing the buck.

3. Constant complaining.

(Source: Glassdoor.com)

Building a More Visible Online Presence

Mon, 21 May 2012 13:32:00 -0500

A few years ago, James Alexander was googling his name and found himself getting increasingly frustrated.

"I'm the guy with two first names, which made it really difficult for people who searched my name to find relevant content," said Alexander. "I got the idea for Vizibility when I couldn't find myself online."

Vizibility, which has raised more than $2 million in angel funding, helps job seekers and workers control their online identities with a "search me" button that displays personalized Google results. The button can be embedded on one's own website or a social media site and then shared with a potential employer. Vizibility offers a number of other tools for managing online identities.

Before founding Vizibility, Alexander, 43, was general manager of Jupiterimages, the third-largest stock media company in the world. Before that, he worked at Adobe Systems for seven years as the director of product management. In addition, he was chief executive at Mibrary Inc. (a service designed to make digital content easier for consumers to use) and co-founded monitoring service eWatch, which was later acquired by PR Newswire.

Alexander has an executive M.B.A. from the Saïd Business School at the University of Oxford and a B.A. in political science from Rockefeller College at the University at Albany.

Alexander talked with FINS about his own career path, from founding start-ups to stints at established companies and back again, as well as today's changing job market.

Elizabeth Garone: How much credit do you give your M.B.A. for your business successes?

James Alexander: When I decided to get my M.B.A., my career was already underway so I chose the executive program. The executive M.B.A. program at Oxford is unique in two ways: first the curriculum is identical to the full-time program but is spread out over an extra year. We shared classes with the full-time M.B.A.s and often took the same exams together. Second, classes were delivered in immersive one week or two week modules in Oxford. There was no online component. This enabled my international cohort to form deep bonds over the two years we were there together.

Having been awarded an M.B.A. from the University of Oxford is of course a great honor. As one of the most prestigious and recognized universities in the world, it has a certain level of cachet and lends credibility. My degree and direct association with Oxford has been valuable in many ways over the past couple of years, especially in my current start up Vizibility.

EG: You have held management positions in large organizations and have co-founded a number of companies. Is it hard to make the transition from founder to manager and back again?

JA: I've led three start-ups and was at Adobe for seven years, so I've been on both sides. There are differences, but there are many similarities, too. At Adobe, I managed the eBook business and started up Adobe Stock Photos as early-stage ventures. Even though these were ventures within an established company, I still had to make a sound business case for investment, just as an independent start-up has to persuasively make a case to potential investors.

EG: Do you prefer the start-up world or working at a more established company like Adobe?

JA: There are pros and cons to both roles. For corporate positions, it's important to maintain company support, and doing that can entail navigating threats to a business line and dealing with company politics. I've done that successfully by building a strong business case and enlisting strong corporate champions. In start-ups, cash flow is a constant concern, as a young brand with limited awareness. I've overcome these obstacles by successfully appealing to investors and forming partnerships to leverage established brands.

I think it's important to remember that the end goal for many start-ups is an exit strategy--a point when the company is acquired by a larger organization, goes public, or has some other liquidity event. In the event of an acquisition, it's extremely beneficial to have the ability to succeed in both small-scale and large-scale environments because, as a successful entrepreneur, you'll have to navigate both worlds once acquired.

EG: What has been one of your biggest career challenges?

JA: What to do next. Picking roles, responsibilities and companies that fit a logical career path and expected progression is probably a challenge for a lot of people. Sure, you can have the list of the five companies you want to work for, but in many cases these things tend to pick you, and not always when you're ready.

EG: How about your biggest career mistake?

JA: Working for my father out of college was a mistake. That's an age when you're trying to break out and define yourself, and I should have avoided coming back to the nest. I was miserable. And I made my father miserable. Thank goodness he had the sense to fire me--literally--after about six months. Several years later, after I started my first software company called eWatch, we had many opportunities to collaborate. Based on the challenges we faced working together earlier, and the lessons we learned, our later collaborations were wonderfully successful and a lot of fun.

EG: Who would you say has helped you the most along the way?

JA: It's rare that success comes without help. I can identify one or two people at each stage of my career who played a guiding, supportive or protective role. Early on I didn't realize that this was happening. Eventually I recognized what was going on and now I actively seek out a mentor or guide in any new assignment. Mentoring can go both ways, too, which means it can be an equal value exchange.

EG: How is today's job search different than even a few years ago?

JA: At Vizibility, we've seen a lot of change in the job search process as we work closely with many companies in the career segment, which have added our service to their own offerings. For instance, we see that automated screening has become far more prevalent. These days, it isn't unusual for employers to receive hundreds of resumes for each job opening. To handle the volume, many companies now use applicant-tracking systems to sift through the applications. In some cases, job candidates' resumes go through several screenings and the applicants are subjected to an automated interview process before a real human being takes a look at their information. Most job seekers have no clue that a computer reads their resume first and that they need key wording strategies to successfully get past them.

The second difference in today's job search process is the greater role of online search engines like Google. More than 85% of recruiters report conducting online searches of candidate names. It's more important than ever now for jobseekers to make sure their online presence presents them in a positive light because it can profoundly affect their prospects.

EG: Vizibility is all about one's online reputation. Why is this subject more important than ever?

JA: In addition to the fact that practically everyone googles job candidates, potential business partners and even friends and prospective dates, there's also the fact that different jobs have different requirements, and it's important for candidates to understand where they fit in. For example, while a high Klout score [a measurement of your online influence] may feed one's ego, it also makes it possible for employers to assess the amount of time a job candidate spends online. In some positions, a high Klout score might be considered a plus. In others, it could be construed as a negative.

The important thing is to know your audience and understand the big picture to position yourself positively within it. Today, professionals are usually expected to participate in new media. But that's not true of every job. Jobseekers shouldn't go out and build a mini social media empire just because social media experts say they should. The bottom line is that jobseekers should assess their goals and make a determination of what level of participation is best, and they should manage their online reputations proactively.

Correction: An earlier version of this story said Alexander was director of project management at Adobe Systems and that Vizibility raised more than $2 million in venture-capital financing. Alexander in fact was director of product management and his company raised more than $2 million in angel funding. FINS regrets the errors.

Write to Liz Garone at liz@garone.com

Facebook On Defensive Ahead of IPO; Defends Culture

Wed, 16 May 2012 10:57:26 -0500

Steve Jobs famously said that he never relied on focus groups or market research because "customers don't know what they want until we've shown them." For a long time, Facebook Chief Executive Mark Zuckerberg seemed to follow a similar philosophy. He rolled out features like the "News Feed" and privacy policy changes with little warning or regard for how they'd be received by users. When people complained about the "News Feed" in 2006, Zuckerberg wrote that everyone should just "calm down" and "breathe." Eventually, Zuckerberg learned to just apologize when one of his innovations was panned.

It's a well-known mantra in Silicon Valley: It's better to ask forgiveness than for permission. But as Facebook prepares to go public this Friday, it's adopting a more conservative approach to research and development, The Wall Street Journal reports. The new "Timeline" feature, for example, was developed over 18 months and the company organized focus groups "to better incorporate user feedback before pushing out the product," WSJ says.

That Facebook is no longer rolling out "half-baked products," as WSJ writes, and is taking a "decidedly deliberate approach to product development," should probably help allay investor concerns about the company's immature, hacker culture. Reassuring investors is especially important now that it's been revealed that General Motors has pulled a $10 million advertising campaign from the social network after determining that the ads don't work.

Reaction to the news, first reported by WSJ, was blustery in some quarters. Henry Blodget wrote that the canceled campaign was "big, bad news" given that one of the world's largest advertisers would rather use free Facebook pages than pay for ads. A more reasoned analysis, though, shows that the news may not be all that bad. First of all, $10 million is a tiny sum when put in context of the $3 billion in ad sales that Facebook did last year. As Peter Kafka writes at AllThingsD, when it comes to its advertising business, Facebook "is still figuring it out."

Which is kind of the point. If Facebook had a fully realized advertising model, it would be a blue chip company and demand for its IPO wouldn't be as high as it is. People want to buy in early at a company that has the potential to give a big return on their investment. The question isn't whether GM advertises or not with Facebook, but whether the company can maintain its huge user base and develop an advertising business to rival that of Google's.

Out the Door (WSJ)

T-Mobile announced that it will lay off 900 employees. The latest round of cuts follows a reduction of 1,900 jobs in March. The company had its plan to merge with AT&T scuttled by regulators late last year.

Losing the Internet (Gizmodo)

When Yahoo bought photo-sharing service Flickr in 2005, it had the chance to create its own social network. Instead, it basically destroyed the product.

Sized Up (WSJ)

The new iPhone, set to be released later this year, will have a larger screen than previous models. Apple is enlarging the phones by a half-inch.

Turnaround (WSJ)

Monster.com is introducing new features--like letting headhunters search through resumes quickly--as it tries to compete with a new generation of job boards. Chief Executive Sal Iannuzzi talks about why he's trying to sell the company and how the it has developed its technological capabilities.

Staying Here (Reuters)

U.S. Sen. John Cornyn has introduced a bill that would give 55,000 temporary work visas to foreigners with graduate degrees who have studied at American universities. In turn, the Texas Republican proposes eliminating the same number of "diversity visas" given to immigrants from underrepresented countries.

Upgrade (Mashable)

Google is beefing up the already cushy amenities at its New York office to compete for talent in the city's growing tech scene. The cafeteria has a new lounge area, softer seating and is open more hours of the day.

Taxonomy (WSJ)

Meetings don't have to be boring affairs, but they often turn out that way because of co-workers. Here's a way to identify the people who are ruining your work get-togethers. There's the Naysayer, the Rambler and the Silent Plotter.

Guided Tour (WSJ)

Speaking of office space, here's a couple dozen photos of the Facebook campus. It's the world's nicest college dormitory, and all the coeds are soon to be millionaires.

Movie Time (Reuters)

Aaron Sorkin, the screenwriter who brought you the Social Network and Moneyball, has signed on to write a movie about the life of Steve Jobs. The film will be based on Walter Isaacson's popular biography.

Buzz Around the Office

The World's Strangest Restaurants (Care2)

They include a cat café in Amsterdam, a restaurant run by children in the Netherlands and a toilet-themed chain across Taiwan.

List of the Day: Getting Ready

School's out and you may be getting ready to start your first job.

1. Clean up your online social profiles.

2. Start networking in your new city.

3. Read as much as you can about your industry.

(Source: Glassdoor.com)

A Test for Digital Ad Salespeople

Wed, 16 May 2012 10:54:24 -0500

Do you understand the nuances between digital media, TV, radio and print? Can you calculate media mathematics and define key digital ad tools?

These are the kinds of questions people who sell digital ads may be required to answer, if the Interactive Advertising Bureau and some of its key members have a say.

The IAB introduced its "Digital Media Sales Certification" exam for salespeople with two to five years experience in the online media industry. "Just as with certificates in other fields, this exam will give current job holders and job seekers a score card to prove their understanding of the most important concepts, guidelines and practices in digital advertising," said Michael Theodore, vice president of member services at IAB.

The exam takes two hours to complete and consists of 100 multiple-choice questions broken into four sections covering the "Digital Advertising Ecosystem," "Selling Digital Media," "Managing Digital Advertising Campaigns," and "Analyzing Campaign Performance." No formal coursework is required, said Theodore.

"Candidates should have a strong command of current industry issues, players, and operations, as well as a broad understanding of major digital platforms, such as mobile, social and display advertising," he said.

Among IAB's more than 500 member companies in the media and technology industries, 25 of them, including Google, Condé Nast, Time Inc., AOL and NBCUniversal, contributed to the exam's development process, which began in November.

"Part of IAB's mandate to make our industry stronger and raise the level of professionalism," said Scott Schiller, 53, executive vice president of digital media sales at NBCU's entertainment & digital networks and integrated media division. Schiller played an integral role in the exam's development as the chair of IAB's "Digital Media Sales Certification" Founders Commission.

The exam isn't a requirement to get or hold a job in digital ad sales, said Theodore. Instead, it serves as a "badge for their careers," he said.

"When I hire someone I look at what traits they have that make them qualified to sell advertising and this certification would mean another stripe on their resume," said Schiller. "For the early adaptors it will signal their commitment to their jobs and as a result open doors."

The exam costs $350 for IAB members and $450 for non-members. Candidates need at least two years of digital ad sales experience or a degree in advertising or integrated marketing to qualify for the exam.

The "Digital Media Sales Certification" exam will be administered by the U.K. educational company Pearson. Interested candidates can apply for on IAB's website. The first quarterly set of exams is scheduled to start Monday, June 11, and will be held at Pearson's test centers around the world.

After July, there will be three additional windows to take the exam in September, December and March of 2013. Further test dates have not yet been set.

Those who fail may retake it an additional two times. After a third failure, that candidate will be required to sit out two examination cycles, approximately six months, before he or she can reapply.

Theodore said that IAB is considering creating a separate exam for ad buyers on both the agency and the client side.

IAB's member companies are responsible for 86% of online advertising sold in the U.S.

Write to Damian Ghigliotty at Damian.Ghigliotty@dowjones.com

Yahoo's Levinsohn Brings Charm and Straight Talk to CEO Role

Tue, 15 May 2012 13:06:06 -0500

Ross Levinsohn has wanted to be the chief executive of a global digital media company his entire career. Now that he's been named interim CEO of Yahoo, he's almost there.

"He's been training for [the job] for a long time, including 18 months at Yahoo," said Jonathan Miller, the chief digital officer of News Corp. who co-founded an investment fund with Levinsohn in 2007.

The opportunity could have come under more ideal circumstances. Levinsohn got the job, which Yahoo's new chairman hopes to make permanent, after CEO Scott Thompson was forced to resign less than six months into the position. Thompson stepped down after hedge fund manager and Yahoo shareholder Daniel Loeb revealed that Thompson didn't have a computer science degree, contrary to claims in his official Yahoo biography.

The bio-debacle has brought even more ridicule to a company that has been maligned for a decade of missteps. Meanwhile, the company is still adjusting to another of Thompson's decisions, the layoff of 2,000 employees. Worker morale has perhaps never been lower at Yahoo.

Former colleagues and employees of Levinsohn's say that the veteran Internet advertising executive is well-equipped to not only turn around Yahoo's struggling business, but to bring a stabilizing influence and restore employee morale. These people describe Levinsohn, 48, as a calm personality able to bring equanimity to stressful situations, and capable of communicating hard truths in a nonthreatening way.

Not Ruffled

"He's not easily ruffled," said Miller. "We've known each other for 15 years; I'm trying to remember if he ever raised his voice. I'm not sure that he did."

Levinsohn's first executive role was at AltaVista, an early search engine company. The company, now owned by Yahoo, was to go public in April 2000, but aborted the IPO as the stock market dropped. Levinsohn, than a 36-year-old vice president, stood up on a cubicle desk and explained to the company's dejected rank-and-file why they wouldn't be able to cash in their stock options.

“
Journalists are pretty happy about it
”

"He was responsible and straight to the point," recalls a former AltaVista employee. "He helped soften the blow."

While Thompson had no experience in advertising sales and spent much of his time educating himself on that part of Yahoo's business, it's old hat for Levinsohn.

After AltaVista, Levinsohn joined News Corp., which also owns Dow Jones and FINS, where he quickly rose to become president of Fox Interactive Media, leading the acquisition of several digital properties, including the $580 million purchase of Myspace in 2005. (News Corp. later sold Myspace for $35 million after it failed to keep up with the growth of Facebook).

He's also worked at HBO and CBS.

Editorial Celebration

Given his background in content-producing media businesses, some Yahoo editorial employees are celebrating Levinsohn's ascension. "Journalists are pretty happy about it," wrote one editorial employee in an email. "He's a bright guy, an engaging speaker and he's from the part of the organization that journalists would like to see dominate the company."

Thompson could reportedly be gruff and even insulting with subordinates. Levinsohn will take a more diplomatic approach to restructuring the company, said David Hill, the chairman and chief executive of Fox Sports Media Group who managed Levinsohn when he joined News Corp. in 2001.

"With a dispirited company, what you find is creativity is going to go out the door. Everyone's scared to say something because they'll be attacked," said Hill. "Reading between the lines, that's why he was put in as CEO. He'll be able to look at the company, see what's what, determine if restructuring is necessary. If there's deadwood to be gotten rid of, he'll get rid of it, elegantly."

Levinsohn is "strategic, he's smart, and he understands style," said Hill, who often runs into his old protégé at their children's soccer games in Los Angeles, where they both live.

While he acknowledges that technology is radically changing the ability of media companies to make money, Levinsohn has often expressed his belief in Yahoo, which many see as a declining force. When former Yahoo CEO Carol Bartz introduced him at a companywide meeting after he was hired in 2010, Levisohn said that for much of his career he had worked for companies that wanted to achieve what Yahoo had: the breadth of audience and number of users.

He seemed "extremely excited" to "be in the big leagues with Yahoo," said an employee who was present at the meeting.

Indeed, Levinsohn "always had aspirations to turn around a large corporation," said Keyur Patel, who was a partner of Levinsohn's at the investment firm Fuse Capital.

Should Levinsohn be named permanent CEO, he'll then have to turn around Yahoo's shrinking advertising business and keep the company from the gradual, steady decline its endured these last several years.

It's worth remembering that his straight talk didn't save AltaVista's IPO chances in 2000. While he maintained employee morale by explaining the realities of the dot-com bust, in January 2001 AltaVista permanently withdrew its plans to go public.

"People were disappointed, but they were motivated to work harder for the opportunity that never came," recalls the former AltaVista employee.

Write to Joseph Walker at Joseph.Walker@dowjones.com

Looking Forward to Facebook Friday

Tue, 15 May 2012 10:13:02 -0500

This could turn out to be one of the best weeks of Mark Zuckerberg's life. Yesterday, he turned 28 and can rightfully claim to have achieved more than virtually any other technology executive, AllThingsD reports.

The real birthday present, though, comes Friday when Facebook goes public. The company has raised its target price to a high of $38 a share, which will give it a valuation of as much as $103 billion. To celebrate, Zuckerberg won't even have to leave Silicon Valley. He'll ring the NASDAQ bell from his company's Menlo Park, Calif. headquarters, TechCrunch reports.

Meanwhile, retail investors are clamoring to get their hands on Facebook stock, despite reservations about its high price, The Wall Street Journal reports. One New York man plans to use his daughter's college fund to buy shares. The New York Times takes a broad look at the businesses Facebook will have to capitalize on to justify the big valuation it will receive Friday. In short, they've got to crack the mobile advertising nut (there's not much space for ads on those small screens), and they've got to better exploit the tons of detailed data they have on their users.

We don't think Zuck's sweating it, though.

Space Needles (TechFlash)

Amazon plans to hire as many as 1,000 new techies in Seattle. The company's headcount has been soaring lately due to call center and warehouse jobs. The tech hiring spree should inject more competition into the city's talent market.

Spruce Up (FINS)

Oh, if we could all be Mark Zuckerberg: young, rich and able to wear whatever we want to the office and business meetings. But for normal people, how you dress still makes a difference.

New Boss (FINS)

Interim Yahoo Chief Executive Ross Levinsohn has wanted to run a company like Yahoo all his life. Former colleagues and employees say he'll bring an easy manner and straight talk to the job. New Chairman Fred Amoroso says he wants Levinsohn to be given the job permanently.

Old Boss (WSJ)

Meanwhile, more details emerge about the downfall of ousted Yahoo chief executive Scott Thompson. He'll take home $6.5 million for his trouble, but won't get the approximately $25 million he would have been entitled to had he lasted at the company.

Farewell Notes (FINS)

When leaving a job it can be tempting to let it all hang out in your good-bye email. But burning bridges and settling old scores will you bring you nothing but headaches.

Dead, For Now (Reuters)

LightSquared has officially declared bankruptcy. Don't count the company out, though, says billionaire founder Philip Falcone. Bankruptcy status gives it breathing room to stage a comeback, he says.

Bad Ending (WSJ)

Richard Schulze founded Best Buy, but yesterday the company announced that he will step down as chairman. An internal probe found that Schulze failed to inform other board members that his hand-picked successor, Brian Dunn, had allegedly carried on an affair with a 29-year-old employee.

New Blood (Reuters)

Adobe has added three new board members, including Cisco Chief Financial Officer Frank Calderoni. The company is in the middle of a restructuring that has resulted in the layoff of 7% of its workforce.

Pile On (Forbes)

Microsoft's Steve Ballmer is the worst chief executive of any large publicly traded company, says this writer.

Buzz Around the Office

Best Friends at the Window (Buzz Feed)

These pairs and trios are content to watch the world go by, so long as they're together.

List of the Day: What They Mean

Here a few translations of some common interview questions.

1. Tell me about yourself (tell me why you're the right person for this job).

2. Explain the organization's mission (explain why you'll be an ambassador).

3. Give me a few questions of your own (demonstrate you actually care).

(Source: The Daily Muse)

You're Not Zuckerberg, So Leave the Hoodie at Home

Tue, 15 May 2012 06:30:46 -0500

With 28-year-olds like Mark Zuckerberg running billion dollar companies, it's easy to think that youth rules in the workplace. After all, if he can get away with wearing a hoodie to meet potential investors twice his age, why can't you?

Well, because you're not the inventor of a social networking site with 845 million users across the globe. Most young people fresh to the workforce still must observe some basic rules of workplace etiquette. Steve Jobs may have gotten away with not bathing and screaming at employees during his youth (and later on), but most people can't behave this way and survive.

"I've seen people who are immensely talented who can't get ahead because of their etiquette," says Nicole Williams, LinkedIn's connection director. "Showing respect, indicating respect by dressing up for an interview, wearing appropriate clothing at work, sending appropriate emails with full spelling and no typos, saying 'please' and 'thank you': That's what will get you noticed, it's what people promote."

With unemployment among those between 20 and 24 years old over 13%, those with little work experience are under a microscope. By deciding not to play the game, they're doing themselves a disservice, Williams says. "The small stuff ends up being the enormous stuff that will end up defining you in your career."

Here are five areas where you're better off following the formalities.

Using the Keyboard

Any young person who hasn't been under a rock should know by now that using Internet shorthand like "lol" and "ha-ha" should be kept out of professional emails. Unless it's to a "work friend" or with someone you've developed a friendly professional rapport with, there's no reason to speak in acronyms.

It goes beyond common Internet slang. One magazine industry professional noted a young assistant who consistently uses "O" in lieu of "Oh" in email communication to people at all levels of the organization. "If you're assisting the publisher, who is the equivalent of a department head or VP, you'd think there would be full sentences, and no use of just the letter 'O' when corresponding on behalf of the boss."

Overusing exclamation points is a rookie mistake that a lot of young people -- particularly women -- make. "You need to be really careful, especially for the older generations who don't necessarily get the nuances of punctuation in email," says Williams. "You don't know if they're reading it as shouting or rude. It throws people off." It might seem like a forgivable mistake or miscommunication, but exclamation points can also give off an air of insincerity or sarcasm.

If you must use exclamation points to convey your personality, limit it to one per email. "If it is something to a stranger, outside vendor, outside customer, the boss's boss -- reread it again and edit out the excessive exclamation points," says Jennifer Owens, the editorial director of Working Mother magazine and Working Mother Research Institute. "I'm upbeat and positive, no doubt, but it's like saying, 'I am happy about this sentence, this sentence and that sentence.' Go back through and decide which one actually gets the exclamation point. Every sentence can't be that enthusiastic."

Maintaining Manners

If you reach out to someone and they provide you with any kind of assistance, you should send them a thank-you note. "The world is busy, people are busy," says Williams, which is why it is important to be gracious when people take a few minutes to assist you. Imagine if you turned your back on someone and walked away without a word after they've answered your question or provided you with help of some kind. "Just because you're asking via keyboard doesn't mean you should lose the nuances of human relationships," she says.

For Jodi Glickman, author of "Great on the Job" and founder of a career consultancy by the same name. "If you are stopping by someone's office or picking up the phone to call them, first ask if they have a moment to speak, or if you are catching them at a bad time," she says. It's a small, easy-to-forget courtesy, but one that goes a long way, Glickman says.

There is also no shortage of complaints these days that young people act "entitled" in the workplace. You aren't entitled to much as a young worker, and you need to show a level of respect for people who may, quite frankly, not show a lot of respect for you.

Williams recalls one young woman who told the owner of a company that she was "meddling" in a project she didn't need to be involved in. "There is an arrogance, like 'I know best, and the rules don't apply to me,'" Williams says. "That's wrong. There may be very few instances where you get respect for that sort of thing, but by and large that will work against you."

The same goes for criticizing existing systems before you understand them. The young assistant described above by the magazine industry professional made a faux pas by going to her boss about a very senior colleague who she believed was being difficult. "It erupted in a screaming match" between the three of them, the more senior colleague explains. "Her mistake wasn't playing a neutral role until she knew the workplace."

Responding to Requests

In responding to requests, be quick, be concise, and be conscious of who you're speaking to. If you are specifically addressed in a message, respond to it. If there's a greeting in the message (i.e., "Hi Jane,"), keep it in place until the other person drops the greeting altogether.

Timeliness -- especially when it involves a request from someone more senior than you -- can have a significant impact on your reputation. "You should respond immediately," says Glickman, but that doesn't have to mean you complete the request immediately if you have a lot of priorities on your plate. The key here, she says, is to simply tell them when you plan to get to it.

"Let me know what your timing is going to be," she says. "If you aren't going to get to it in three days, say 'Thanks so much, I received your request, I will look at this Wednesday, but let me know if you need it sooner." Then, it's your responsibility to remember to look at it on Wednesday and report back.

Second, do not send long-winded explanations over email at work. Unless you are completely certain that every last bit of detail is necessary, you want to make paragraphs no more than two or three average-length sentences, with the expectation that whoever is reading that email is probably going to just briefly scan it over to get the gist of it.

If you can tell that your boss didn't read through the message you sent her last week, chances are the email was too long. "If there are people above me who need to know the situation, boil it down to the most important point," Owens says. If you can't manage to make it concise, pick up the phone. "Sometimes you need to just talk," says Owens.

With your boss, it's your responsibility to ask your manager how and when they want to hear from you instead of assuming they will tell you themselves. "Be really clear with people about when and how they want to hear from you," Glickman says.

Dressing the Part

It's easy to get in the habit of dressing down for work, particularly if you're in an office that tends to dress casually. You shouldn't take that as an open invitation to wear jeans every day. "There is nothing wrong with being a little on the professional side of things," Owens says.

Pay attention when you're dressed up and dressed down: Are you being asked to work on assignments? Are you being asked for your opinion? Are you feeling disrespected by colleagues? Are you being put on desirable project teams? If you're feeling left out or unimportant, you should figure out who is being asked for those things, Owens says. "Use all of the clues surrounding you." If the only perceivable difference is your attire, consider reworking your wardrobe.

Women in particular need to dress the part. "In terms of clothing, hair and makeup, you need to appear one to two levels more conservatively than either you (a.) like or (b.) think you need to," says Glickman. That means the obvious, like no cleavage or short hemlines, and the less obvious, like heavy eye makeup, chipped nail polish, flip flops and knowing the difference between "dressing up" for the bar and the office.

Speaking up in Meetings

While saying too much as an office newbie can be damaging, not anything at all is a rookie mistake. Silence can be read as disinterest, unpreparedness or a lack of knowledge. You'll find it's hard to get ahead if you keep your head down instead of taking advantage of opportunities to productively contribute to office discussion and planning.

Meetings are where you can shine. Take time to prepare so your comments are relevant and contribute to the discussion. "When you are older and more experienced, you might make more off-the-cuff remarks," says Owens. "When you are new and the lowest on the totem pole, you might need to prepare. The opportunity to speak out might not come, but if you are prepared, you are ready if it does."

Arriving on time, which means five minutes early, and having a thorough understanding of the client and your company's history with them, for instance, or organized notes on the project you're assigned to goes a long way in the eyes of more senior colleagues. "Do the research so when you are walking into a meeting, you know something about that person," says Williams. "It is amazing to me how few people really do that."

Women in particular have a tendency to keep quiet in meetings. "Women tend to undermine themselves," Glickman says. "If you have a good idea, speak up, and don't always qualify it." That means eliminating phrases like "You may not agree," "This may sound stupid," or "Someone's probably come up with this already" from your go-to lexicon. Replace them with "Have we considered trying," or "I'd like to suggest we do," which are much more self-assured statements.

This self-assuredness goes a long way when it comes to moving upward into new and challenging roles, rather than remaining complacent with a fear of being unqualified for growth. "Starting from a junior age you should assume you should rise to a challenge, and that you can learn the ropes," Glickman says. "Go for opportunities you want, and be in the driver's seat for what you want to do."

Write to Kelly Eggers at kelly.eggers@dowjones.com

How NASA Led Tech to the Cloud

Mon, 14 May 2012 10:45:31 -0500

A decade ago in a Houston bar, an Air Force general named S. Pete Worden (pictured left) ran into a group of young, liberal graduate students who were attending the World Space Congress, a spaceflight industry convention, to protest the militarization of space.

Worden, then 52, was a big proponent of weapons in the stars, having earned the name "Darth Vader" while working on President Ronald Reagan's "Star Wars" program, more formally known as the Strategic Defense Initiative. Overhearing the group arguing about space militarization, Worden plunked himself down at the group's table and pushed the merits of U.S. military policy.

"For five hours we were yelling at each other across the table," recalls Robbie Schingler, now 33, who was then between master's degrees at the International Space University and the Georgetown University McDonough School of Business. "The next day he said, 'Let's write a paper together on the pros and cons of weaponizing space. You write the cons, I'll write the pros.'"

The paper never materialized, but an unusual friendship and mentoring relationship did. When Worden became director of the NASA Ames Research Center in Silicon Valley four years later, he recruited the group of Houston 20-somethings, along with a handful of their friends. Included were Schingler and Chris Kemp (pictured above, right), then 28, who would become Ames's director of business development and later its chief technology officer.

Worden thought his young recruits would shake up NASA's sleepy research culture, but they ended up doing a lot more. They came up with a platform that's reshaping the entire technology industry. Under Worden's tutelage, Kemp and his colleagues helped develop OpenStack, a shared, non-proprietary cloud technology that is the tech industry's best weapon against Amazon in the war over the fast-growing $6.42 billion market for cloud computing infrastructure.

“
Amazon has a formidable foe in OpenStack
”

In April, 19 tech heavyweights including AT&T, Hewlett-Packard, IBM and Cisco formed the OpenStack Foundation to oversee further development of the technology.

"Amazon has a formidable foe, not with a particular company but a whole movement of technology which is OpenStack," says David Linthicum, founder of Blue Mountain Labs, a cloud computing consulting firm in Reston, Va. "This isn't a scrappy start-up," says Gartner analyst Lydia Leong. "It's a coalition of large and powerful vendors."

Cloud computing, or remote server storage, has allowed start-up Internet companies to get online and create a business with a few hundred thousand dollars and a good idea. Large businesses can cut their IT and data center costs while having faster access to massive amounts of data that can inform their business decisions.

Amazon is the granddaddy of cloud; the company began selling extra capacity from its book order system as a Web service in 2006. Amazon Web Services now controls 44% of the market, according to Forrester Research, and is estimated to generate more than $1 billion in revenue annually, according to Gartner Inc. Companies from Facebook to Zynga have used it to build billion-dollar companies. By 2015, spending on cloud systems infrastructure is expected to reach almost $20 billion.

An Outlier in the Military

That Worden and his team became cloud proselytizers happened by chance. With a Ph.D. in astronomy, a credential more suited for academia than a military career, Worden was an outlier in the military and in government. His father had served as a National Guard pilot, and and after receiving his doctorate from the University of Arizona in 1975, he followed in his footsteps.

"My true love was always space exploration," he said in a 2007 oral history. "But I had a slight detour of 29 years in the Air Force."

Worden rose swiftly through the ranks, going from lieutenant to colonel to major and eventually to one-star general. In the 1980s he worked on arms control negotiations with the Soviets, and during the George H.W. Bush administration he was appointed to the National Space Council and later became head of technology for the Missile Defense Program. He left the White House after President Bill Clinton came into office and went back to the Air Force, where he commanded the 50th Space Wing, a unit responsible for Department of Defense satellites used during military operations.

"He was a space guy and an intellectual. It's unusual to make it to that rank and still be as free spirited as he is," says NASA Chief Historian Bill Barry.

Shortly after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks in the U.S., Worden took on a role that became particularly controversial. In an effort to influence world opinion on Islamic terrorists, the Pentagon created the Office of Strategic Influence and appointed Worden to lead it. According to reports in the New York Times, Worden's mission was to plant false ?news" stories, or "disinformation," at foreign media outlets. The revelation caused a national firestorm, and Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld was forced to close the office, though he and Worden denied that disinformation was a goal of the program.

Worden's subsequent appointment to lead a NASA research center surprised some because he had often criticized the agency for spending too much money for too few results. In a 1992 academic paper he called NASA a "self-licking ice cream cone," military slang for a project that benefits no one but the people who ordered it.

"He was critical and that's part of the reason he got recruited to lead Ames," says Barry. "He was willing to take a hard look at things and take a different approach."

Rainbow Mansion

By 2006, the crowd from the Houston bar had moved into a seven-bedroom, 5,200-square foot estate in Cupertino, Calif. nicknamed the Rainbow Mansion after its address on Rainbow Drive. It became a salon for technologists in Silicon Valley. Over wine and home-cooked meals, Kemp, Schingler, other NASA folks and like-minded Apple and Google employees would talk for hours about their roles in shaping the future of technology.

Worden and Kemp's bid to challenge Amazon in cloud began as a way to fix NASA's outdated IT infrastructure. The agency's computing power was spread across thousands of servers in hundreds of data centers. It caused innumerable headaches for NASA scientists and engineers, who had to go through a complicated and lengthy procurement process to secure new server space if they wanted to start a project.

Kemp decided NASA should have its own cloud computing system. He recruited an eccentric technology entrepreneur named Joshua McKenty, a self-taught computer programmer who had dropped out of school to join the circus while he was a teenager. With a small team of engineers, McKenty began building what would become OpenStack.

Kemp, a hyper-articulate and ambitious bureaucrat, began evangelizing the project, which he nicknamed NASA Nebula. Based on conversations with Kemp, Worden advised officials at headquarters in Washington who were in the midst of arranging data center contracts that the agency should halt its procurement process. Cloud is changing the world, Kemp recalls Worden saying, and if you lock yourself into these contracts you'll regret it.

As Nebula began getting more notoriety, it drew criticism from within the agency and from lawmakers who worried that cloud computing would take away data center jobs in their districts. Kemp had trouble getting buy-in from NASA's rank and file, who feared that change might threaten their own projects.

"If you're going to spend $4.9 billion building and launching and getting something to Mars, you don't care if a network back on earth costs $50 million or $100 million," Kemp says. Luckily, Vivek Kundra, the Obama administration's new chief technology officer, caught wind of Nebula and thought it fit perfectly with his plan to bring the entire federal government into the cloud. He asked Kemp if the Nebula team would build a cloud infrastructure to host the revamped version of USASpending.gov, the searchable database of federal spending.

Meanwhile, McKenty and the team members he'd recruited to Ames were learning about the roadblocks that emerge when working for the government. Because they were third party contractors at NASA and not civil servants, the process of simply getting their hands on writing utensils became a bureaucratic hurdle.

"Pens are provided by your contract office, but we didn't have a line item on the contract that would supply us," McKenty, 34, recalls. "The civil servants owned the supplies. We literally had a civil servant say she would issue us each one pen, but we had to bring the empty pen back when we had used it up before we'd ever be allowed a second."

The support of Kundra provided some cover and funding for the team to finish Nebula. USASpending.gov was launched after much bickering between staff members, and in 2010, NASA released the code onto the web as a free, open-source project.

Not long after, Rackspace, the second biggest cloud services provider behind Amazon, called Kemp and said they wanted to merge Nebula with their own open-source cloud computing technology. A few months later, OpenStack was created.

Founding New Companies

OpenStack might never have come to fruition without Worden. "Pete made all this possible. He allowed us to go and innovate," says Kemp. "People went to go work for Pete because he inspired them, not because he was a great manager or paid them a lot of money."

With OpenStack now a growing part of the tech landscape, many of Worden's recruits have gone on to found their own cloud-computing start-ups. Kemp resigned from NASA last spring and a month later founded Nebula Inc. which promises all the benefits of the cloud delivered with a hardware appliance running OpenStack. The company is backed by Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers and Andy Bechtolsheim, the co-founder of Sun Microsystems and the first major investor in Google. Kemp declined to specify how much money he's raised.

Nebula is still piloting its product with a small group of 12 customers. Over the next six months, Kemp says, the company will work with the companies and use their feedback to perfect the product and bring it to the public. He's recruited a few of his employees from NASA to come with him, including co-founder and Vice President of Engineering Devin Carlen.

McKenty has launched a competing OpenStack-based start-up called Piston Cloud Computing, which unlike Kemp's company, is built around software instead of hardware. The company has raised $4.5 million from investors, including True Ventures. The company is targeting customers that face regulatory compliance issues in creating their own private cloud infrastructure. They're hoping they can rise to the top of the OpenStack industry despite their heavy-pocketed competitors.

Worden is still at Ames. His impact on cloud computing was accidental. His passion was never for IT, but for the exploration and settlement of space. Still, he recognized how the Internet was transforming the world and scientific research. With cloud computing, scientists can query petabytes of data and come up with answers in minutes, whereas in the past it would have taken days or weeks.

He remains in contact with the group he recruited in 2006 and enjoys watching them try to conquer the Silicon Valley tech scene, not far from his office in Mountain View. He hopes that some will return to the agency and help further its mission of settling the solar system.

"One of the most important things a scientist, or anyone for that matter, can do in their life is to find a replacement. It's particularly gratifying when they're excited and have new ideas -- ideas that will live and grow long after I'm gone," Worden wrote in an email. "I suppose since my wife and I never had children, then to some extent these folks I work with are like my kids."

Write to Joseph Walker at Joseph.Walker@dowjones.com