eBay has welcomed yet another executive back into the fold with the return of Gene Cook. The “boomerang” hiring spree of high level executives started with the return of Jamie Iannone in the role of CEO in 2020.
Cook announced his return as Vice President of Collectibles at eBay in a LinkedIn post today. He’ll be in charge of one of eBay’s most important “focus” categories. “I’m only a few days in,” he wrote on his post, “but I’m already struck by just how focused and committed the team is to ensuring that eBay creates amazing, high-trust experiences for our community of buyers and sellers.”
Cook first joined eBay early in its history – his first day was October 20, 2003, when he managed eBay Stores. In 2009, he shared a story of a special find on eBay that meant something deeply personal to him and his family, captured in this YouTube video:
At that time (2009), Cook was Director of Global Search at eBay. A few years later in 2014, as eBay’s General Manager of Emerging Verticals, he was tasked with reviving the live auction format through a partnership with Invaluable.
Other notable boomerang hires at eBay include Eddie Garcia, who returned in April in the role of Chief Product Officer; Randy Shoup, who rejoined eBay as Chief Architect in June of 2020; and Xiaodi Zhang, who returned to eBay as Vice President of Seller Experience last month.
In the spring, former eBay executive Bill Cobb referred to Iannone’s re-hiring binge as “the band getting back together.”
In today’s post, Gene Cook wrote in part, “It’s Week 1, and I’m in NYC with the team for comic con. I will hope to see any local buyers and sellers there, and I’ll welcome any thoughts ongoing about how we can best work with the community to help make great things happen in the world of Collectibles. I’m fired up! Let’s go.”
Since eBay is the San Jose Mafia – I will do my best to use Sopranos episodes (where eBay gets its ideas from) to explain articles.
This one is from: “No Show” is the 2nd episode of Season 4 of the HBO television series The Sopranos. It is the 41st overall episode in the series. Written by David Chase and Terence Winter, and directed by John Patterson, it originally aired on September 22, 2002.
A “No Show” is where you hire your friends and give them big salaries – they just dont DO anything aka they are a NO SHOW.
This is what happened in this episode when Tony and his crew started building the Esplanade in NJ with NY’s blessing (and a cut of the action).
Here, the boomerang jobs for people who were useless to begin with, now come back for jobs with fancy titles and perks but do nothing all day (like Mr eBay for Dummies).
(Recap of the issue from the show directly: “Patsy Parisi and Little Paulie have arranged a sit-down on his behalf to discuss Ralphie’s division of jobs at the Esplanade site. It takes place at Nuovo Vesuvio and Silvio Dante presides. After some haggling, they settle on five jobs: three no-works and two no-shows. Capo Paulie receives the first no-show job. Silvio announces that Tony wants Christopher Moltisanti as acting capo of Paulie’s crew during his absence and gives Chris the second no-show job. This upsets Patsy, who believes he has seniority over Chris, as he has been a made man longer. Indeed, it was Patsy and not Christopher who negotiated the jobs in the meeting. The three no-work jobs are given to Paulie to distribute, and they go to Patsy, Benny, and Little Paulie. )