Rosenblum has been on vacation for a month after Greene's firing, possibly to lessen the bad publicity ahead of VMworld 2008 in Las Vegas which starts next Monday — while Microsoft has been busy introducing its own virtualization technologies in a barnstorming campaign this week. My advice to Greene and Rosenblum? Sell those pre-IPO options as soon as you can, because the stock is bound to dip below the initial price sooner rather than later.

Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg strikes us as more concerned with her personal PR than with the boring but important operational problems she was hired to solve. Yahoo president Sue Decker can be as Machiavellian as any guy, but her boneheaded reorgs are responsible for much of the company's current straits. Greene was one of the few women leaders in the Valley who seemed worthy of out-and-out admiration. That she was ousted by a jealous man makes the absence of her equals all the more glaring.