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Wall Street wants Zuckerberg fired

by on27 July 2012



Time to step aside


Facebook's Mark Zuckerberg is already managing to do what it took Steve Ballmer 10 years as a CEO to archive – a general call for him to step down.

While he has not been ruling Facebook as a publicly listed company for very long, Zuckerberg appears to have sailed up the nasal passages of Wall Street. To be fair most people in Wall Street are used to having things up their nasal passages but it seems that Zuckerberg is really getting their goat.

According to a Reuters op-ed, by  John C Abell the masses who were dumb enough to invest in Facebook need a hero and Zuckerberg is not it. Abell says that Zuckerberg is letting down those who saw something shiny and new, but are now seeing shades of “overhyped tech redux”.

The question appears to be that Zuckerberg is doing the wrong job. Unlike Jobs who made a good spiritual leader and CEO, Zuckerberg is not really CEO material. [Yes, believe it or not Zuckerberg makes Jobs look good even in Nick Farrell's eyes. Ed]

Investors want someone in a collared shirt who spouts business bollocks at them, not some geek, however clever they are. There are tons of managers who could do that job, just not Zuckerbert who should be dealing with strategy. Reuters' Felix Salmon pointed out that Zuckerberg has no control over his company’s share price, but once a company is public, that’s all the great unwashed cares about. Zuckerberg was partly responsible for stupid idea that his company was really worth $100 billion when it went public. No one sane could have believed that.

But getting out of the CEO role makes sense. It worked for Gates, and Evan Williams who stepped aside to focus on product direction. Google’s Larry Page stepped aside for a while to let Eric Schmidt take the lead. Schmidt did some pretty good things with the role. Zuckerberg would still have a lot of control. He is Facebook’s controlling shareholder and the chairman of the board, so nothing significant can be done without him.

It is just with him as a CEO things are going from bad to worse.

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