When the iPhone was introduced, Apple gave one to every employee. After the price drop, Apple gave early adopters a $100 store credit. It was noted in a few articles that Apple employees would not get any rebate on their free phones. As many as 800 retail employees succeeded in cashing in their credits anyway — and reportedly got fired. No surprise. Why Jobs's smoothly tuned retail machine didn't prevent the rebates from being issued is the mystery here. We call for an SEC investigation! (Photo by Daniel Shaw-Cosman)

We hear that Marcien Jenckes, general manager of AOL's instant-messaging products, was among those cut in today's mass layoffs. The Dulles, Va.-based executive was hired by an executive close to former CEO Jonathan Miller, so this may well have been a purge of the ancien regime, according to a former AOL executive. Too bad: Jenckes's moves in the IM business prompted Forbes to wonder if AOL might actually have a clue. (Well, no, but hope springs eternal.)

Oracle executive John Wookey has left the software company, reportedly after a spat with CEO Larry Ellison. Anything to do with Oracle's recent offer to buy BEA — or a sign of trouble brewing with Oracle's next-generation version of superboring business software? Anyway, all we really care about is the spat. More spats, please! [eWeek]

Benjamin "bling" Ling, described as one of "Larry and Sergey's golden boys," is jumping to Facebook, reports Josh Quittner at Netly News. Ling will reportedly head the white-hot Facebook platform program, having previously succeeded with Google Checkout. Quittner says Google's stunning $600-plus stock price has backfired on the company, making it profitable for top staff to bail out now rather than waiting for more shares to vest. (Photo courtesy of AuctionBytes.com)

Lucy Hood, Jamba CEO and president of Fox Mobile Entertainment, has quit. Though no future plans have been announced, we suspect she'd fit right in at the Fox Business Network, alongside Hewlett-Packard alum Carly Fiorina. Heck, she could make it an intracompany transfer. [Silicon Alley Insider]

Sprint CEO Gary Forsee is quitting effective immediately and Sprint has adjusted its financial guidance downwards. The company's board has been looking at outside candidates, so feel free to submit your resume. [WSJ]

Sprint Nextel board members are on the hunt for a new CEO to replace Gary Forsee. Sprint has been losing out to AT&T and Verizon in signing up new customers and recently lost the confidence of investor Ralph Whitworth, who owns almost 2 percent of the company. [WSJ]

"Not so well-kept secret in the Valley is that Google is freaking out because a lot of its folks are vesting soon and these greedy, restless bastards are looking for the next Big Score and right now that's looking like Facebook. So lots of Google talent is going to be streaming out the door to Facebook and all the free bus rides in the world aren't going to keep them locked in." — Forbes editor Dan Lyons, posing as Apple CEO Steve Jobs. [The Secret Diary of Steve Jobs]

Niklas Zennstrom, CEO of Skype, and eBay are paying the price for the disastrous acquisition of the Internet telephony service two years ago. The Skype cofounder has stepped down from his CEO role, and eBay will take a $1.4 billion asset-impairment charge — more than half of the $2.5 billion they paid for the company. The silver lining? eBay only has to pay $530 million of a potential $1.7 billion earn-out to Skype investors, since Skype is performing so poorly. With the shareholder payment out of the way, eBay can more easily put Skype on the auction block. And Zennstrom can focus on Joost, his new online-video venture.

The innocent spin being put on top Apple lawyer Don Rosenberg's departure is that he got a better offer from Qualcomm. But Rosenberg, a decidedly gray figure who came to Apple from Big Blue, served as the company's general counsel for less than a year. He filled a post that had been empty for six months after Nancy Heinen left amid a stock-backdating scandal. And Rosenberg's replacement, Dan Cooperman, comes from Oracle, where he worked for Larry Ellison. Ellison, like Jobs, is a famously temperamental founder-CEO. He's also a close friend of Jobs, and used to serve on Apple's board of directors. This all seems quite cozy, and curiously timed. Anyone know the back story here — and why Apple keeps chewing through its top lawyers?

Remember Yahoo Pipes, the "interactive feed aggregator and manipulator" — in other words, a website meant to help people build simple Web applications? It launched to some fanfare last February, with many taking it as a sign of Yahoo getting its mojo back. We hear that the project is starting to "implode," as our tipsters says, with most of its upper-level people looking to get out. Already gone, Wired's Epicenter notes, are the two cofounders of the project, Pasha Sadri, who left to pursue a "personal project," and Edward Ho, who just joined rival Google. Pipes was the first major release out of Yahoo's Brickhouse, the company's San Francisco-based startup-idea incubator. That Brickhouse's door is revolving so swiftly after six short months isn't a good omen to us. So, how are the rest of Brickhouse's projects faring? If you've heard anything, please fill us in.

Search and ye shall find — steady employment in advertising, that is. That's the lesson I'm taking from Mike Kelly's abrupt ouster, announced today, as head of AOL's ad sales. How abrupt? Mediaweek just named him one of the 50 most influential people in advertising. If you haven't heard of Kelly, here's his resumé at a glance: A Time Inc. ad sales guy who rose to become publisher of Entertainment Weekly, Kelly was sent down by Time Warner to fix AOL's relationships with advertisers. He largely succeeded in that, and also spearheaded the acquisition of Advertising.com, an online ad network that places ads on third-party sites. Advertising.com has provided much of AOL's recent growth in ad revenues. But elsewhere, AOL's ad sales have stalled. Especially in search. And Kelly, fairly or unfairly, is getting the blame.

Miles Flint, president of mobile phone maker Sony Ericsson, is being replaced by Dick Komiyama, a Sony Electronics executive. Flint's claim to fame: Using Sony brand names like Cyber-shot and Walkman to sell music-playing and photo-taking cell phones. [The Register]

We hear that Mark Rubash, left, a Yahoo finance executive hired by Yahoo president Sue Decker in February, is already leaving the company. Rubash, a favorite of Decker, was apparently the loser in a turf war with fellow finance executive Rachel Glaser, pictured here to his right.. We can't help but wonder if Glaser, a commuter from Los Angeles who's widely disliked on the Sunnyvale campus, will last much longer, as Yahoo undergoes a top-to-bottom reorganization. "She has no financial acumen," whispers one tipster — a fact that, if true, can't be lost on Decker and her recently hired ally, CFO Blake Jorgensen. Update: Rubash says he was offered a job over Glaser's head, but turned it down.

On AllThingsD, Kara Swisher has the scoop on some minor personnel moves at Yahoo. But surprisingly, the reporter who's normally so plugged into the mess at Yahoo may have missed the big news. One tipster claims that Gregory Coleman, the longtime head of sales, is on the way out, to be replaced by Hilary Schneider, who currently runs Yahoo's e-commerce businesses, such as they are. The ad salesforce is supposed to get the word today, with the official announcement coming tomorrow.

Does anyone really believe it's a coincidence that Google CFO George Reyes has announced his retirement so soon after the company missed Wall Street analysts' expectations for earnings in its second quarter? I only regret that I hadn't included Reyes in our ongoing "Toogle Many Googlers" series, in which Valleywag attempts to solve the binge of overhiring that led to Google's profit shortfall. After all, if the CFO isn't minding the payroll, who is? When reading these departing-executive press releases, just imagine that the fond farewells are in opposite-speak, and they begin to make sense.

Self-described "Web strategist" Jeremiah Owyang, the director of corporate media strategy at beleaguered video site PodTech announced on his blog that he is leaving the troubled startup to become an analyst at Forrester Research. At last, a real company. Congratulations, Jeremiah! So, who's next to escape from PodTech? Should we start the countdown to job-seeking value-adding videoblogger Robert Scoble's departure?

AMD's chief sales officer, Henri Richard, has reportedly resigned, amidst a bruising competition with rival chipmaker Intel. [Hexus]

Virgin Media's CEO Steve Burch unexpectedly quits the heavily-indebted British media "quad-play" "for personal reasons" after volatility in the credit and debt markets forced a delay in the company's auction. [MarketWatch]

NICK DOUGLAS — Dennis Crowley announced Sunday night that he's left Google. (His friend Andrew Krucoff scooped him.) The Dodgeball founder said that the company had never given his team the resources they needed to maintain and expand the location-texting service. "The whole experience was incredibly frustrating," he wrote on a group blog. Crowley posted the same story on Flickr, where he also commented that he and co-Dodgeballer Alex Rainert left "regardless" of their Google stock (or options) vesting schedule. "Regardless"? Ha! Google bought Dodgeball 23 months ago. One would assume his contract made him stay two years to collect a stock or options bonus, and Crowley can't be dumb enough to walk away one month before payday. Assume he and Rainert got their money's worth out of these dreary two years — and they sure deserved it, having to sit back and watch startups Twitter and Jaiku take over the group-messaging field. The next question is, will Google shutter Dodgeball? (Photo: Dennis Crowley)