The top ad on Google right now for "John Thompson" advertises "German Goo Girls Extreme," and links to a site whose name we shall politely decline to mention but which describes a hardcore sexual fetish.


What does this have to do with the tightly laced Thompson, an IBM lifer before he joined Symantec, and a prominent Obama fundraiser whose name came up for the cabinet post after New Mexico governor Bill Richardson dropped out?

It turns out he shares a first and last name with porn merchant John Thompson, who specializes in producing videos devoted to a particular kink.

What's really sad? One would think the head of a company whose software defends the world computers against Russian mobsters, Bulgarian hackers, and Chinese script kiddies would have a good story to tell, but one would be wrong. Thompson gives stultifying interviews. This is by far the most interesting thing that has ever, or will ever, be written about him.

VeriSign chairman Jim Bidzos
An employee's advice to senior management:

Don't drag out the divestiture process in an effort to get a few extra bucks. And if you're going to kill the whole thing, be honest with employees about opportunities.

AMD chairman and CEO Hector Ruiz
An employee's advice to senior management:

AMD needs to go back to basics. What business is AMD in, who do you need onboard to lead the company in that business, who do you need that can create demand for the product, and what do the customers want? Ignore the "how" and focus on the "who." Stop treating employees like costs and more like assets. Threatening cubical hoteling and pushing the "do more with less" story is oppressive, not inspiring. The most marketable talent will leave first.

EMC CEO and chairman Joe Tucci
An employee's advice to senior management:

Senior management needs to respect its employees, listen to feedback and not bury its head in the sand as it relates to issues of sexism and lack of diversity. The culture continues to be predominantly young white men and this is largely because people hire who they know. "Breaking the glass ceiling" requires a lot of sacrifice! They will cite a few examples of high profile women, but these are the exception, not the rule. Work/life balance is not a priority in this company. Most of the highest ranking professional women in this organization are unmarried or do not have children. They need to recognize the need for more flexible work options that promote the importance of family. And most importantly, there need to be consequences for illegal and unethical behavior, regardless of who commits it! People cannot be protected from this. There are too many blind eyes turned when sexual harassment, illegal business practices, or other unethical acts occur.

Yahoo CEO Jerry Yang

An employee's advice to senior management:

Be more open to the workforce opinions. Be more humble. Be less political. Listen more, do more, and quickly.

eBay CEO John Donahoe
An employee's advice to senior management:

Streamline the process so people can focus more on getting their work done. Share more of the details of the vision for eBay and the competition of eBay.

Symantec CEO John Thompson
An employee's advice to senior management:

Open your eyes to how the actually successful companies are doing it. Use your talent pool and clear the way to innovate internally. Shift the focus from salesmanship to inherent quality. Build products that sell themselves rather than needing an aggresive sales cycle to move.

Hewlett-Packard chairman, president and CEO Mark Hurd
An employee's advice to senior management:

Stop screwing the employees. Stop reducing benefits every week. Stop saying you plan to invest in research and development when you are actually reducing everything except your bonuses. Start treating people as people. Get some moral fiber.

EDS chairman, president and CEO Ron Rittenmeyer
An employee's advice to senior management:

As I said above, either learn to trust the junior leadership you put into place or replace them. Set goals and then GET OUT OF THE WAY and allow the leadership the flexibility to execute to them. If they don't perform, release them. The micromanagement culture has to stop.

IBM chairman, president and CEO Sam Palmisano
An employee's advice to senior management:

One thing is missing though, an acceptance of the fact that there are "superstars" in the world, and that these superstars perform several orders of magnitude better than regular employees. What is missing within IBM is the ability to seek out, and nourish these superstars. Over time superstars will leave IBM because they will get much more recognition in other organizations. This has an impact on IBM's ability to deliver some things.

Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer
An employee's advice to senior management:

There is a severe lack of leadership in the company. With so many things going on it takes executives too long to commit to business decisions and too long to pick up on competitive responses to disruptive technologies.Microsoft promotes based on 2 facets - technical knowledge and political saavy. What Microsoft does not promote based on is leadership ability, managerial ability or business saavy.

(Photo of Ballmer by AP/Sarbach)

At an all hands meeting last week [Symantec COO] Enrique Salem tap-danced around the question from an employee dealing with "If Symatnec claims to be a security company why are we laying off the folks that do security, authentication and authorization, for Netbackup, and other Veritas products?"

Butterfield came with Symantec's Altiris acquisition in April 2007. Back in December 2006, Butterfield said he planned to turn Altiris into the next IBM, HP, CA and BMC. But then came Symantec's offer. By November 2007, word leaked the company was planning mass layoffs after U.S. sales continued to sink.

... we have not met our planned new business targets.... We continue to optimize our sales leadership team around the globe to improve execution.... we are focusing our hiring efforts within the sales operation on the faster growing emerging market ... we will continue our strong focus on controlling our costs with specific targets for each operating unit for the second half of the fiscal year.

Also at risk: Nontechnical employees at Vontu, the recently purchased San Francisco security startup, in the usual post-acquisition purge. In fact, anyone who worked at a company Symantec bought in the past few years should watch out: "Going forward, we will continue to evaluate our portfolio to ensure that we focus our investment efforts on a few key strategic areas that drive long-term revenue growth," Thompson also said in the earnings call. Translation: If your business unit is not producing the gusher of cash your VCs promised Symantec when they sold the company, you're outta here.

A few years ago, Veritas CFO Ken Lonchar (pronounced like 'Lawnchair') resigned in disgrace for not having the Stanford MBA he claimed on his resume.

People who really knew corporate dirt claimed it was timed to avoid him causing corporate trouble for a relationship with a low-level employee (since there are enough bona fide Stanford MBA's around to ask hard-to-fake-questions like 'Did you have Bulow for Finance?' and not be satisfied with any answer that does not include 'is he the guy who can do logs in his head?').

More memories of Veritas after the jump.

Symantec Hit With Big Tax Bills [L.A. Times]

Ken came to Veritas via a merger with another firm and wasn't subject to background checks—but there weren't any in place, at least for ordinary engineers, when I was hired, pre-ouster, in early 2002. That changed right afterwards.

In the post-Ken clean-up there were endless reviews or everything that happened during Ken's watch, late 10K filings for almost all the intervals following (up to the SYMC merger), and bizarre financial reckonings (20 or so number crunchers camped out in a windowed first-floor conference room for months, and the sheer dullness of their tasks and dress code made me pity accountants everywhere.). So the disputed years have already been gone over pretty carefully—something else may indeed be going on.

John M. Thompson, CEO of Symantec, according to Google Finance

Hooray! Silicon Valley has black people! They're just disguised as white people!

Symantec Corporation [Google Finance]
The New Symantec [Symantec]