Most likely he didn't know he wasn't up to it, or thought he could get up to it if he made a big effort. If he knew he wasn't up to it, he'd have been insane to take the gig. And for all we know, he expressed his doubts to Mayer and she told him not to worry, he'd do great. For her, it was a coup to hire him away from her former employer--at least she thought it would be.
You're making all kinds of assumptions about him on the basis of no evidence. Sorry but that is because you don't know the tech industry. A little story, back around 1980 I was out of a playing gig and doing temp work. I took a week long workshop on hiring by the state's employment agency. One of the topics was on selling one's self. I raised the question "what if the person is really good at selling themselves but not really good at the job itself?" The class responded "yeah, what about that?" The instructor was a little stumped. Fast forward to the 1990s when I'm hiring folks and watched very carefully when interviewing and hiring to make sure that these "star" candidates who put on quite a show really could do the job. There are lots of great salesmen out there who are poor producers. So I suspect that what de Castro did that would be wrong or dishonest was he was an opportunist and did whatever he could possible to get into a position he was not capable of handling. He should have been been honest enough to "I'm not up to that... yet." And yes, Mayer should have been better at filtering it out but then I know how crazy stuff is in this area and the screwball poor judgment of people and execs in the tech industry. If anything good comes out of Silicon Valley it is often by accident. :-D On 01/19/2014 09:44 AM, authfriend@... mailto:authfriend@... wrote: Of course not. Why would you think it makes him a scamster? Again, his hiring was Mayer's poor judgment as to his competence. She hired him despite his "spotty record." There's no evidence he did anything wrong or dishonest. More on the guy who got away with the big golden parachute from Yahoo. "Mr. de Castro, who was hired away from Google, was hardly a tech superstar. He had a spotty track record at the search giant. And less than a year before he left, he was demoted from managing media and platforms to an amorphous role working on 'special projects' on a team of one. Although he was promoted back into a bigger role several months later before jumping ship for Yahoo, it was not an auspicious sign for someone who was going to help turn around Yahoo." http://news.cnet.com/8301-1023_3-57617453-93/fired-yahoo-coo-de-castro-made-more-than-marissa/ http://news.cnet.com/8301-1023_3-57617453-93/fired-yahoo-coo-de-castro-made-more-than-marissa/ Still think he's not a scamster?
