IBM vs. Dell SVP of Strategy... Corporate vs. Personal Ethics

I really try to be ethical in doing business. If someone tells you they are always ethical, ask a ton of questions and then run as fast you can. As much as we'd like to pretend to all be ethical, it's almost impossible to never make a screw-up. My policy is to fix what I screw up and be on-the-table with everything else.

I've been reading the press on this monkey business with IBM and Dell over Dell's new SVP of Strategy who was formerly IBM's Corp Dev guy. Google the title below if you want the WSJ take.

Here's what I find disturbing - David L. Johnson, the guy this all centers around, played around with his agreement because he didn't want to agree to it and IBM was withholding equity awards until they got a signature.

So instead of forcing the issue, not taking the equity and being above board with his issue - he turns it around and signs in the wrong place to make the agreement invalid. Then he collects his quity and is happy until IBM comes after him to stop him working at their competitor.

Now I think non-compete agreements are bogus in general but I leave a few loopholes:
(1) I don't think you should purposely move from your current job to a competitor if you can't be trusted to keep the secrets of your former employer.

(2) I think non-compete's should be eliminated and only done on the basis of severance. If a company thinks you're valuable, they should pay you severance and make not competing with them a condition.

Having never met David L. Johnson in real life, I hope it turns out that there are facts at work here beyond what's reported in the papers. If it's true that he pulled monkey business around this agreement, took a job at a competitor and basically gave IBM the finger - Dell should fire him right away. It shows that he will blatently screw over his employer to get the best deal for himself. What happens when he pulls the same shenanigans at Dell and moves to HP to help them get ahead.

I just wonder how some of these executives look themselves in the mirror in the morning. Aren't they embarassed that they tried to pull a fast one on the company that helped feed their families, pay for their childrens college and made sure they had health insurance.

IBM Is Denied In Bid to Stop Hire at Dell

Google Finance vs. Yahoo Finance

So I was expecting Google Finance to be totally awesome when it finally came out of beta this year.

I wanted to believe that Google's comand of real time information + a good UI would end up creating an awesome product.

Turns out they do a great job with their portfolio offering within Google Finance... but a really AWFUL job with news. To me news is far more important than my portfolio (which E-Trade already tracks).

I'll document one example (there have been many):

My former employer (SUN - NASDAQ:JAVA) was set to be acquired by Oracle at $9.50/share in cash. I of course think this acquisition is likely to happen and figured it would be good to buy some stock before the acquisition while the market price was around $9.30. It represented a solid, short term return in my book and since there is no insider knowledge of the transaction... a pretty easy deal.

I kept track of the price and suddenly saw a dip on Friday to $9.01 (from a prior $9.30). The regulatory review by the DOJ was now being extended (to allow a deeper review) and thus the market had adjusted the price to $9.01.

Now check out the news reported by Google Finance (Earnings Preview: Oracle to report fiscal 4Q MSN Money - Jun 22, 2009) is their top story.

Compare it with what you see from Yahoo where the top 4 stories are about the fast track deal approval.

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I think information matters more than fancy UI's for seeing the trend of your stock. Since you can't buy your stock from Google - they should be focusing on providing information with which to make a current decision (buy, sell, hold)... which means timely news matters

I seriously hope they see this post and get their act together - the more I use Yahoo lately, the more I start (barely) moving away from Google