StillSecure, After All These Years: Like US Presidents, when a CEO leaves their legacy is important

One of the things you always hear about lame duck US Presidents is they are always very concerned with their legacy. How will history treat them. Will Bill Clinton be best remembered for the economic prosperity we enjoyed under his administration or will it be about what he did with some White House intern? In the case of George W Bush, did he keep America safe after the terror attacks of 9/11 or did he involve us in an unnecessary and costly war, ruin the economy, etc, etc. I don't care what side of these you are on, the important thing is when a leader leaves, how he is remembered and what his legacy is critical.

Yesterday we heard about two high profile tech leaders leaving. Over at Symantec, John Thompson will retire at the end of this fiscal year. At Yahoo, Jerry Yang one of the co-founders at Yahoo stepped down. How will history treat these two? Is it fair? I think probably not.

Lets first examine Yang. An icon of the Internet era, he gave life to one of the original Internet powerhouses. It seemed that Yahoo was going to be one of the four horsemen of the Internet going forward. Starting with search, they moved well beyond mere search. The company spawned countless dot com millionaires and made billionaires of Yang and his fellow co-founder. If Yang would have stayed out of it when he first left Yahoo, his legacy would be secure as an Internet legend. But he came back to help Yahoo compete in the Web 2.0 Internet. An Internet where Google is the undisputed king of search and Yahoo had to learn to monetize other areas of the business. But Yang I think is destined to be best remembered as the arrogant techie who refused to come under Microsoft's thumb and turned down a 10's of billions of dollars offer. While he was offered 33 dollars a share, his stock today is under 11 dollars. To add salt to the wound, after cozying up to arch enemy Google to thwart Microsoft, Google tossed him aside like yesterdays news. I am afraid history will not look kindly on Yangs legacy. In fact the future of Yahoo itself is no longer StillSecure (hey I couldn't resist the plug).

Thompson on the other hand I think will be treated much more kindly by the historians. John was not a founder at Symantec. But ten years ago he took over a consumer computer security and utility company and turned it into one of the biggest software companies in the world. Though there are many who point to a lack of innovation and execution, as well as integration at Symantec, the fact is that under John Thompson, Symantec is a giant. They are big Yellow. They have moved beyond security into storage and network management. They have added to the consumer segment both enterprise and mid-market. Symantec is in fact ubiquitous. I think that is the legacy that John Thompson will be remembered for favorably by history.