Whatever the case, we salute you, Lance. Most human-resources chiefs are faceless bureaucrats content to implement whatever hiring or firing plans are handed to them. By standing up both your overworked team of HR workers, who are struggling just to put together severance packages for all of AOL's planned firings, as well as all for all of AOL's employees, you've made yourself a hero.

No way Bill Wilson would quit in protest over layoffs. He lacks the integrity for that kind of protest, and anyway he doesn't give a fuck about the people who work for him or who use his products. This is a guy who would regularly undermine his direct reports' by going to their subordinates and instigating HR trouble in their departments. He's also a known sexist and racist, even though he never shuts up about how he worked at Def Jam and used to shine Lyor Cohen's shoes. Ask any of his female or ethnic direct reports - oh wait! there aren't any! they all quit! - or anyone who has ever worked in AOL's retarded Latino or Black divisions.

The only way he might quit is if he was up late one night in Jersey writing one of his patented 'roid-rage team emails. Although that guy runs a bullshit "my body is a temple" meeting - he eats the fruit and salad and gives you a smug dirty look if you reach for a cookie - he always felt like a closet coke fiend or steroid addict. Or maybe the REFUSE TO LOSE!!! thing is Landmark or Scientology. But something dumb and annoying.

No way he is quitting over layoffs.

Most of AOL's executive lineup is easily eliminated from this guessing game — as easily eliminated, apparently, as AOL staffers are from their jobs. Forget the faceless financial, HR, and legal types, as well as strongman tech chief Ted Cahall, who seems to take glee in cutting a swath through his department.

That leaves two likely candidates: Kevin Conroy, head of products (left), and Bill Wilson, the muscular, ab-proud head of programming (above, to Conroy's right). Wilson, one former AOL insider says, is unlikely to show the kind of loyalty to his troops implied by a protest resignation. Conroy, on the other hand, seems vulnerable as a member of AOL's ancien regime, having joined the company in 2001. Grant and Falco may well be content to see him go, so they can put in one of their own executives. And having built up the programming arm that Wilson now heads, Conroy may be equally sensitive to cuts there as to slashes made to his own department.

But this is only guesswork. I have no confirmation, as yet, on who's out the door — just that one executive vice president is quitting. I hear, though, that AOL's leadership is so touchy about any perceptions of chaos at the company, that they've put the screws on the executive in question not to leak any word of his departure until after the layoffs. Perceptions of chaos at AOL? You don't say. Talk about shutting the barn door after the horses have run.

Heard anything more on who's out the door? Let me know.