John Christopher

eBay Looking to Sell StumbleUpon

Check out glassdoor.com

Donahoe's rating as a CEO is around 29%

Even Dick Fuld the CEO of Lehman Brothers has a higher rating! LOL

How Would an eBay Layoff Impact Sellers?

eBay has a policy where even if there is a layoff or hiring freeze the job openings posted online will not be taken down. It's been that way my 3+ years there. Think of it as cheap PR.

Most likely places for cuts:

- Customer Support. Of the 15,000 employees almost half are CSRs, therefore this is the logical place to cut.

- Middle management - there are LOTS of managers and directors with no direct reports within eBay. There are also a fair number of "managers reporting to managers" and "directors reporting to directors." I say flatten the organization and get rid of the excess. Interestingly under Matt Carey there was supposed to be a rule where each manager must have 3 or more direct reports. But I guess that's just a rule-of-thumb and not a corporate policy.

- eBay has jumped on the "work part time at home" band wagon so maybe a portion of F/T positions will be converted to contracts.

As I mentioned in a separate thread... folks if you want eBay to change for the better forget about talking to Donahoe or any of the execs. Go to the top and contact Pierre Omidyar (founder and chairman of the board).

eBay's Latest Screw-Up

Response to Dinah Balk about Best Match: leapingcat is right, the execs have bought into what the feature *could* be. In fact, I believe the company has spent hundreds of millions to develop Finding. For the past 2 years it's been the #1 priority for the company (from an engineering point of view). When I talked to one of the program managers for Finding at the end of last year when we were going through Telluride (internal exercise to determine strategy for next year) he said the company was planning to "double down" on Finding for 2008.

Interesting bit of info: eBay does more searches on a daily basis than Google.

Regarding your comment "I don't think JD has any intention of trying to make eBay profitable" - he has to turn the company around, if only to make sure he gets the monetary reward out of it. Surely he is not making as much now as a CEO than when he was at Bains. If the stock doesn't go up his stock options won't worth much.

Meg appointed JD partly because of her past relationship with him but (my conjecture now) I don't think there was anyone else internally for the job. JD was on board ~2 years when he got promoted to CEO; he's been groomed since day 1 for the position so even though he failed to deliver with the Marketplace BU it's almost inevitable he would get the job.

eBay's Latest Screw-Up

I used to work for eBay (I left in 1Q08) therefore I can provide an unique perspective on the company and its management.

Yes JD (John Donahoe) is trying to make eBay more Amazon-like to compete against the internet shopping powerhouse.

I can't say for certain, but I believe he wants eBay to be less "flea-market" like and more "professional." Yes I am aware this cuts into the company's bread and butter, which is the mom and pop operations.

Best Match is not working. But the intent of the company - if ever they can make search work properly - is to list the items correctly, in other words, elimination of duplicates, reduce any sellers from "stacking" the results, etc.

I don't think things will change any time soon, for the following reasons:

(1) The company is not run by eBay-ites. In the old days employees were really passionate about the company because they were users of eBay. Not anymore. You now have a bunch of execs who do not actively buy/sell on site. Ask John or Bob or Lorrie what is their feedback score and you'll see. The company has exchanged eBay users for a bunch of MBAs.

(2) JD was in charge of the Marketplace (auction) dividion for ~2 years before he was promoted to CEO. During that time he did NOT turn the division around. When I worked there I sent in a question to the "Ask an exec" forum of why the board would promote someone to the head of the entire company when he couldn't even turn one division around. Needless to say I did not get a response back. Lorrie is now head of Marketplace. She is one tough lady but the auction business is no SDC (shopping.com); I doubt she'll be able to do much for the business.

(3) If you guys want I could post the email addresses and phone numbers of the execs. But I tell you it won't make any difference. If you REALLY want to change eBay contact Pierre M. Omidyar (founder of eBay). I believe he is the only person who can make significant changes at the company.

(4) Believe it or not JD really WANTS to turn the company around. He is just a little misguided. His compensation and tenure are dependent on keeping eBay profitable. I know there've been tons of screw-ups; but if you ask management what is the company focus for 2008 they'll tell you:

- Finding (aka search)
- Bad buyer experience (including TnS, security, VERO, feedback, etc.)
- Customer retention (frequent flyer program)

So believe me the company is spending MILLIONS in those areas. We just haven't seen any decent results.

If anyone has any questions let me know and I'll try to answer as much as I can without compromising my NDA.