SAMALA

The wheels are coming off the bus at Facebook. There is one sure sign, one incontrovertible indicator at technology companies that need cash and have no business plan, of maximum identity crisis, even on-the-verge-of-meltdown turmoil: the departure of the CFO.

Gideon Yu, Facebook’s CFO since summer 2007, left the building yesterday.

Before that, another CFO left Facebook less than two years ago—which indicates that Facebook’s ubiquity and sheer fabulousness are masking either growing pains or long-term turmoil.

The CFO in a company that depends on higher and higher valuations to keep its investors happy is the second most important person in the enterprise and often the paramount figure. Getting rid of your CFO is only a smidgen different from getting rid of your CEO.

The CEO gets rid of the CFO only with tremendous court intrigue and palace coup fashion (it can just as easily happen the other way, with the CFO offing the CEO).

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