Yahoo! CEO Steps Down After Resume-Padding Scandal

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he former President of Paypal and Yahoo!'s CEO, Scott Thompson, made headlines after resigning from the company after just four months, thanks to a scandal involving a falsified resume and misleading credentials. In this day and age, where the internet is ubiquitous in job searching (we've all been Googled, right?), it's pretty shocking to think that a CEO of an internet company would fabricate parts of his experience and expect not to be found out.

The idea that someone so deeply involved in the workings of the internet would assume that no one would check out his background is baffling.

Scott Thompson issued a press release on May 13 announcing his resignation. The scandal began when the chief of hedge fund Third Point, Daniel Leob, confronted Thompson over the computer science degree listed on his resume—turns out Thompson never earned that degree.

While it may not seem like a big deal to lie about earning a certain degree, the idea that someone so deeply involved in the workings of the internet would assume that no one would check out his background is baffling.

What's sad is that Thompson is by no means the first person to do this, yet it seems to keep happening, despite all of the outcomes being relatively the same: the chief executive of Radio Shack lied about earning degrees in psychology and theology, and when he was found out, he resigned; the CEO of Bausch & Lomg lied about having a master's in business administration, when he really never finished it, and he had to leave his business; Presidential candidate Joe Biden ran for President in the late '80s but dropped out of the race when it was uncovered that he had lied about the sort of scholarship he attended Syracuse University with. There are other examples, but the general point is that lying about these sorts of things can cost a hell of a lot more than what it would take to just earn the degree that's being lied about.

With any luck, this will send a message to current and future grads—it's better to just work with what you've got and wow employers that way than by making up experience that you clearly don't have, because sooner or later, you'll likely be found out.