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Would you rather work for a founder or a professional manager?  Yahooligans will find out in the wake of CEO Terry Semel’s demotion this week. Co-founder Jerry Yang is returning to shepherd the company.

Yang is a sharp and savvy tech veteran who understands Yahoo!’s culture from inside out. Just as with Michael Dell, who resumed leadership in 2007 of the company he founded in 1984, the concept is that the founder can’t do any worse. In the head to head competition against Google, Wall Street viewed Semel’s Yahoo! as Avis to Google’s Hertz.

Certainly Yang and Dell are likeable fellows who understand their customer’s needs. Still, I wonder if founders have the objectivity - or stomach - to make substantial changes.

In general, founders are not considered excellent professional managers (not that you require an M.B.A. to shepherd people). Though they never lack passion or interest in employees, founders often lack objectivity. They may cling to ineffective ideas longer than is healthy. And investors often fear that the founders lack the ability to scale operations, sell or merge the company when the time is right.

On the bright side founders have the corporate culture imprinted in their DNA. Sometimes companies need a shot of the original Mojo and that’s the perfect time to bring back the founder. Certainly that idea worked pretty well for Apple when it brought back Steve Jobs.

No one ever said Jobs was easy to work for, but that’s not what investors care about. It’s an issue both for employees and prospects to consider.

Archives for Workplace

Back in the late 90s, in the peak of the dot-com craze, Silicon Valley companies dreamed up imaginative ways to better attract, ‘engage’ and thus retain young tech workers who might otherwise bolt for the competitor’s promise of IPO riches. Perks such as onsite haircuts, gym memberships, laundry services, and sushi chefs were de rigueur.

These perks were also intended to help offset the stress of 70-hour work weeks, low pay and the lack of a social life. Yet this worker-friendly campaign never really caught on outside of high-tech companies. While notable perks such as massages-in-your-cube remain distant memories, enlightened employers still emphasize creating a fun workplace and positive corporate culture. At tech companies here you can still find juice bars, workout rooms, ping-pong tables, foosball, and espresso machines.