Microsoft beware: Stephen Elop is a flight risk (2008) | Hacker News Reader

Microsoft beware: Stephen Elop is a flight risk (2008)

siliconbeat.com

58 pointsborism12 comments

From the article,

"After he had been working at Adobe for about six months, Elop told the company in June 2006 he’d be leaving, setting his departure date as Dec.5, one year to the day since he had been hired."

"At Juniper, Elop resigned on Wednesday (2008) — also one year to the day from when he started "

And then Microsoft for two years. And now Nokia. What kind of impact did he make on all these companies (given the tiny amounts of time spent in each) that made Nokia think he had the chops to rescue them? Genuine question.

And to think that when underpaid developers move frequently , they are "bad hires" e.g: "Never hire job hoppers. Never. They make terrible employees." - Mark Suster (HN discussion at http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1287110)

The differences in standards applied to people perceived as "executives" vs. people perceived to be "employees" are truly astonishing.

You are being too unkind. I think Elop has already finihsed his job.

Maybe making it more valuable to leave than stay was a bad idea, huh? If someone offered me $800,000 to stay, or $1.8million to leave, I'd leave, too! Especially if I could be working somewhere else during that time as well.

sure, if ones primary objective in life is climbing corporate ladder as high as possible and making as much money as possible in the process, that makes pretty good strategy.

Considering his job until now at Nokia, I would say that making it more valuable to leave should be the highest priority to anyone foolish enough to hire him.

Whoever does professional placement for him, however, deserves serious credit.

Well, in light of this, we should all check the news for Elop's name in about a year from now...

He never quit Microsoft. ;-)

He was always a.... "company man".

Seems to me there should be longer delay periods on bonus payments of that scale. Granted, I'm not living in that stratosphere, but ... yeah, as someone else said, if I could leave after 1 year (to the day) with an additional 1.8 million for no more work, or stay (and commute) for less than half that... why would you? The 1.8 could have been there for 'time on job' of, say, 3 years, or 5. Or pro-rated to the time spent on the job?

This reminds me a bit of the 'bankers' on wall street a couple years ago. "But if we don't offer sweet deals like these, this top talent won't come work for us!". Do you really want to incentivize 'top talent' to leave on day 366 (or, in wall street's case, take massive risks)?

Seems like he is hiding an e from his last name :) Stephen Elope is his real name. He runs away to marry a new company every other year.

First piece of good news Nokia's gotten all week.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com