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Yahoo Taps Its Inner Startup

businessweek.com

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Re: Yahoo Taps Its Inner Startup

#11

Post by e1ven »

danielha wrote: post #3
amichail wrote: post #2

How does this compare to Google's 20% time for your own projects?

How does it compare? Well, the objectives may be similar but Yahoo's execution is much more deliberate. While Google's 20% time is a corporate policy that encourages side-projects (that may see see the light of day in the form of a beta product), Brickhouse is Yahoo's full-fledged effort to develop novel ideas in-house that it has been historically purchasing at premium prices. It seems that Brickhouse, as a division…

I would suspect that here, they pull you directly away from your current projects, to work on the new Startup- This isn't 20% time, it's "Work on your own time until you have a good prototype.. Then, 100% time"

Re: Yahoo Taps Its Inner Startup

#12

Post by aglarond »

It seems like a good move on the surface. Digging a little deeper, though, one notices a couple of quotes:

"But he compares what he and Fake are doing to what record label executives do, searching out the best talent."

Someone who compares himself favorably to a record label executive in today's world is out of touch with how the target demographic for Brickhouse products feels about such things. I don't know how much trust I could place in Horowitz's decisions regarding this new internal "startup".

"Horowitz...said the figure would be somewhere between a pat on the back and an acquisition-size bonus."

If I were a Yahoo employee, I don't think I'd feel too reassured that my hard work would get appropriately recognized. That "pat on a back" may be for an excellent idea, well executed, but unfortunately not able to be capitalized upon within Yahoo's current structure.

It seems to me that the idea of Brickhouse is good, but it may be a case of too little, too late. I don't get the feeling that it will be able to achieve its potential.

Re: Yahoo Taps Its Inner Startup

#13

Post by wensing »

I have friends that work at Y! that are the most talented programmers I know--however, when they recently had a startup idea, there was definitely a 'should we tell our parents?' consideration that wasn't shaken off until the startup had already been built (at least the beta).

That said, the code coming out of Y! lately has been excellent in quality and in pushing the web developer community forward (e.g. Yahoo! User Interface Libraries, Yahoo! Pipes) . . . but at such a massive company, that code is coming from a very small percentage of its employees, and features such as '360' seem very uninspired IMHO.

At the end of the day, there is a disturbing theme throughout this article: give some of our best talent the opportunity to leave the mill and work on something revolutionary, and maybe they won't leave in the first place or keep their ideas secret, and just maybe they won't mind if the compensation is rather dismal compared to what it could be--after all, we can protect them from what so many of them consider the greatest risk: jobless with an unsuccessful startup.

Maybe they should ask themselves why they are a mill in the first place?

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