Live data from Hacker News

Yahoo SEC Filing: Name change to Altaba Inc and director resignations

investor.yahoo.net

41–50 of 383 posts

Re: Yahoo SEC Filing: Name change to Altaba Inc and director resignations

#43

Rather than the inevitable bashing of Marissa that will undoubtedly unfurl on this thread, I'd like to put in a little reminder that we usually celebrate taking on big projects and big risks and that we should commend her for taking on the immense challenge of steadying the Yahoo ship. Yes, she wasn't able to keep the ship from sinking. But I do think she put in a good-faith effort.

I do as well. As outlined in The Halo Effect, people want very tidy, clean, and rational reasons why a company failed. Blame must be specifically laid somewhere. However, there's a pretty good chance no one available could have saved the demise of Yahoo. Variance is a thing.

I don't really mind people failing.

I do think there's something wrong with someone earning massive amounts of money to fail and then everyone saying, "Oh well, anyone would have failed in that role."

Why pay someone huge sums of money if failure is the expected outcome?

Re: Yahoo SEC Filing: Name change to Altaba Inc and director resignations

#45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I do as well. As outlined in The Halo Effect, people want very tidy, clean, and rational reasons why a company failed. Blame must be specifically laid somewhere. However, there's a pretty good chance no one available could have saved the demise of Yahoo. Variance is a thing.

I don't really mind people failing. I do think there's something wrong with someone earning massive amounts of money to fail and then everyone saying, "Oh well, anyone would have failed in that role." Why pay someone huge sums of money if failure is the expected outcome?

>Why pay someone huge sums of money if failure is the expected outcome?

Because all big C-level positions work this way? Doesn't make it a good idea, or even rational. But humans are of the rationalizing type, not actual rational beings.

Re: Yahoo SEC Filing: Name change to Altaba Inc and director resignations

#46

I wish there was a real alternative to search. I use DuckDuckGo, but I believe they run on AWS and purchase index data from Yandex et. al. At this point, is it even feasible for anyone to enter the general search market, or has Google simply set the barrier to entry too high? Are there any niche search engines that focus on things Google has either removed or doesn't index? Are there other alternatives besides DDG, S…

It's going to take a couple of years for it to be realistically usable day to day, but I have some faith in the distributed search. http://yacy.net/en/index.html

In a long run, but only is personal storage going to allow this easily, but our searches are usually pretty limited in scope. I could resolve ~90% of my queries with indexes of SO, cooking websites, very limited number of blogs, documentation of standard libraries of a few languages. This would even fit on my phone right now.

Re: Yahoo SEC Filing: Name change to Altaba Inc and director resignations

#48

Rather than the inevitable bashing of Marissa that will undoubtedly unfurl on this thread, I'd like to put in a little reminder that we usually celebrate taking on big projects and big risks and that we should commend her for taking on the immense challenge of steadying the Yahoo ship. Yes, she wasn't able to keep the ship from sinking. But I do think she put in a good-faith effort.

I want to echo on your message and also to thank you for contributing with a positive comment and not with a harsh one like most people often do.

I remember a few years ago when some of the stuff that Marissa was doing to reshape Yahoo's internal structure were being looked with good eyes and were being replicated in other companies (Bringing in remote people, focusing on some products, etc.) I guess we can all agree that in the end she didn't do the best job but maybe no one else could've done it differently. No way to know now.

Re: Yahoo SEC Filing: Name change to Altaba Inc and director resignations

#49

Rather than the inevitable bashing of Marissa that will undoubtedly unfurl on this thread, I'd like to put in a little reminder that we usually celebrate taking on big projects and big risks and that we should commend her for taking on the immense challenge of steadying the Yahoo ship. Yes, she wasn't able to keep the ship from sinking. But I do think she put in a good-faith effort.

Let's do away with excessive scorn for failed CEOs and excessive adulation for successful CEOs.

There's a lot of randomness in business and in life.

Re: Yahoo SEC Filing: Name change to Altaba Inc and director resignations

#50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I do as well. As outlined in The Halo Effect, people want very tidy, clean, and rational reasons why a company failed. Blame must be specifically laid somewhere. However, there's a pretty good chance no one available could have saved the demise of Yahoo. Variance is a thing.

I don't really mind people failing. I do think there's something wrong with someone earning massive amounts of money to fail and then everyone saying, "Oh well, anyone would have failed in that role." Why pay someone huge sums of money if failure is the expected outcome?

I suppose, there's a huge responsibility coming with that role, and you also know your name will be stained forever. But it's something somebody has to do.
Post reply on HN