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Boo-hoo for Yahoo!

Today at noon, Yahoo CEO, Scott Thompson must leave his position or the hedge fund company, Third Point will begin a power struggle that would hurt an already beleaguered web company. What’s will all the hate? Well, in a letter send to Yahoo’s board of directors, Third Point CEO, Daniel Loeb, said that Thompson lied on his resume. When Thompson took the post at Yahoo, he claimed to have a degree in computer science, but he only has one in accounting. A reply sent from Stonehill College, where Thompson attended, stated that Thompson had only taken introduction to computer science and that they did not award degrees in computer science until four years after Thompson had graduated. The letter goes on to cite another Yahoo employee who have padded her resume. This whole situation calls into question Yahoo’s ethics and their talent pool.

Lying for personal gain is in and of itself wrong, but it would be naive to say that this wouldn’t be a such a large issue if Yahoo wasn’t having such a rough year. Thompson has had an erratic record. He’s filed a lawsuit against Facebook for patent infringement. It’s an expensive suite that Yahoo will have a major uphill battle to win. He also ordered a mass layoff of over 2,000 employees. He claimed that, “are an important next step toward a bold, new Yahoo — smaller, nimbler, more profitable and better equipped to innovate as fast as our customers and our industry require…” Being like Chainsaw Al, doesn’t make him very endearing.

Lying on your resume is nothing new. But everyone from IT consultants to morticians should understand the importance of truth. And if we can’t expect transparency and honesty from those at the top, like Thompson, why should they expect it from us?