Ask John Donahoe, who became the CEO of eBay (EBAY) in March 2008. Not only did Donahoe take the reins of the online retailer from one of the star CEOs of the dot-com era—the current California gubernatorial hopeful Meg Whitman—he did so at a time when the U.S. economy was imploding and eBay’s business model was under assault. Suddenly, the new guy was getting pounded from all sides. One employee wrote an online post arguing that “Donahoe has made eBay a miserable debacle and it’s getting worse every day.” The owner of a company that sells on the auction site called his strategy a “concentrated effort to destroy the eBay marketplace.” Jim Cramer weighed in on his Mad Money television show with this vote of confidence: “EBay has lost touch with reality…the company is hapless,” he said in September 2008. “They ought to sell themselves to someone.” You might call it CEO hell, but Donahoe didn’t kid himself. “It’s going to get worse before it gets better,” he kept saying.

Continue reading