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)

Important to note here, but resoundingly ignored, is that this isn't a lawsuit about headlines or thumbnails or linking, as the Google News/Perfect 10/Belgian newspaper lawsuits were. Moreover is accused of commercially using full-length AP stories without any sort of payment.

Kristen Nicole at Mashable has a post typical of this kind of misreading. She titles her story "AP Sues Viacom for Linking. Hello... It's the Internet!" Moreover is owned by VeriSign, not Viacom. She then goes on to talk about how this has already been settled by the courts and that "linking" is fair use and perfectly acceptable. Yes, Kristen, linking is fair use, but that's not what this lawsuit is about.

(Disclosure: Nick Denton, owner of Valleywag's publisher, Gawker Media, was a cofounder of Moreover.)

Exclusive: Verisign shopping its mobile biz [Valleywag]

Verisign dumped $273 million on Jamba (a.k.a. Jamster, the guys who filled the UK with the annoying Crazy Frog ringtone). They also snapped up mobile messaging service Lightsurf. But after jumping the gun on this "mobile phones are the new MTV" fad, Verisign has had trouble convincing investors that its acquisitions are worth anything.

But those investors were right — last year, Jamba's growth nearly evaporated. Now the mobile market is in freefall as teens get so over ringtones and Tetris clones. Verisign wants to get out the door before anyone even knows they were leaving. No one's told the press yet. Even the Red Herring didn't catch on before publishing "VeriSign's Big Dreams" this month.

Can't be a good sign for other mobile content providers, and a sale like this could spark an industry-wide sell-off. Thank God! No more viral ringtones!

Verisign's Big Dreams [Red Herring]
VRSN's staggering stock [Yahoo Finance]

Stratton Sclavos is President, CEO, and board chairman of Verisign. So blame all those customer-service screw-ups and domain abuse cases on this rock-and-roller.

George Boutros's Wired Magazine profile is titled "Shut Up and Deal." 'Nuf said. Shut up and vote, and make momma cry.

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