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So Adbrite took Philip "Fucked Company" Kaplan out of the CEO seat and renamed him "Chief Product Executive." CEOs never die, they just get made chairman. A veteran Valley journo filled Valleywag in on the favorite titles for CEOs put out to pasture:

  • Chairman: The traditional classic. As powerful as the board wants him to be.
  • Founder: "Gone, daddy, gone." Louis Rossetto gets "Founding Editor" on the Wired Magazine masthead. Louis Rossetto hasn't edited a thing for Wired since Providence Equity seized control of Wired in 1997.
  • Vice chairman: Extra gone.
  • Chief Technology Officer: Great place to stick a nerdy founder who can't manage people. He attends conferences while the VP of engineering builds software.
  • Chief Strategy Officer: Flip side of the CTO — he knows people but is totally faking the tech side.
  • Chief [Name of Company]-er: Let's put it this way: When's the last time Yahoo CEO Terry Semel gave the stage up for "Chief Yahoo" Jerry Yang?

BONUS CHAT TRANSCRIPT:

Valleywag: And if you really do want the CEO to keep doing something — what do you make them?
Valley vet: CEO.
Wag: Really, a CEO has nowhere to go?
Vet: If they're useful, why move them? But Eric Schmidt shows that the CEO title doesn't necessarily mean anything.

Earlier: Bubblewatch: Folded and fucked [Valleywag]
Photo: Philip Kaplan [Noah Glass on Flickr]