Carol Bartz Out at Yahoo; CFO Interim CEO • Hacker News Board

Re: Carol Bartz Out at Yahoo; CFO Interim CEO

#61

Post by ecuzzillo » Wed, Sep 07, 2011, 3:00 AM UTC

Jun8 wrote: post #55

Another nail in the coffin for the "A successful CEO's skills can easily transfer to any company" idea! From the top of my head (other than Bratz): Zander at Motorola, Sculley at Apple, etc. You just can't graft them on like that.

It might be true, though, that there is a large equivalence class of companies that can trade CEO's well, and interesting consumer tech companies are just not in that equivalence class. It seems like Coke and Levi Strauss could trade, for example, and be fine, or something.

Re: Carol Bartz Out at Yahoo; CFO Interim CEO

#62

Post by hristov » Wed, Sep 07, 2011, 3:11 AM UTC

blantonl wrote: post #14

steve8918 wrote: post #9

I used to work at Yahoo during the whole Microsoft debacle. I have to say that this is a disappointing development, namely because it really sounds like the board is giving up on Yahoo, and they will package up Yahoo to the highest bidder. It certainly sounds like the board is getting bored (pun intended) of trying to resuscitate Yahoo and would rather move onto newer and fresher companies with richer rewards. This u…

A Microsoft acquisition looked attractive, but I would argue that a Google acquisition would be far better for both. Google would foster a culture totally different from Yahoo's, and at the same time thrill the existing Yahoo employees - which means they would stick around. So much opportunity for both. Microsoft is a great company, but their online businesses are losing money like crazy, and I suspect that many Yaho…

The FCC would never let Google acquire Yahoo.

Re: Carol Bartz Out at Yahoo; CFO Interim CEO

#63

Post by mkr-hn » Wed, Sep 07, 2011, 3:12 AM UTC

hristov wrote: post #62

blantonl wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A Microsoft acquisition looked attractive, but I would argue that a Google acquisition would be far better for both. Google would foster a culture totally different from Yahoo's, and at the same time thrill the existing Yahoo employees - which means they would stick around. So much opportunity for both. Microsoft is a great company, but their online businesses are losing money like crazy, and I suspect that many Yaho…

The FCC would never let Google acquire Yahoo.

Are you sure you don't mean FTC?

Re: Carol Bartz Out at Yahoo; CFO Interim CEO

#64

Post by deltaqueue » Wed, Sep 07, 2011, 3:15 AM UTC

xyahoo wrote: post #53

An ex-Yahoo here, using a throwaway account. Yahoo's biggest problem is the creamy middle layer of managers. They are usually lifers (as in, been at Yahoo for a decade), or fresh MBAs with a Stanford degree who think that just because they sat through Management-101, they know how products should be designed. This middle layer is like a Turkish harem. They're busy backstabbing each other, politicking and fucking thin…

Just a single data point, but I noticed similar antics even from outside the organization. My company licensed our software to Yahoo for several years, but they stopped using it six months into the contract. The projects kept running and we kept collecting data, but nobody ended up doing anything with the data. Employee turnover in this division seemed like 6-12 months, and to my disbelief the Harvard and Stanford grad managers I interacted with had no idea what was going on or what they were doing.

I certainly don't think the concept of losing scope over the course of an enterprise software license or a project's life cycle is unique to Yahoo, but these corporate inefficiencies have been a serious eye-opener.

Re: Carol Bartz Out at Yahoo; CFO Interim CEO

#65

Post by jarek » Wed, Sep 07, 2011, 3:19 AM UTC

mhd wrote: post #38

Fired over the phone ? Is that common at that level?

Supposedly the CEO and the chairman were on opposite U.S. coasts. Must have been pretty urgent though...

Re: Carol Bartz Out at Yahoo; CFO Interim CEO

#66

Post by jzawodn » Wed, Sep 07, 2011, 3:20 AM UTC

xyahoo wrote: post #53

An ex-Yahoo here, using a throwaway account. Yahoo's biggest problem is the creamy middle layer of managers. They are usually lifers (as in, been at Yahoo for a decade), or fresh MBAs with a Stanford degree who think that just because they sat through Management-101, they know how products should be designed. This middle layer is like a Turkish harem. They're busy backstabbing each other, politicking and fucking thin…

As joshu said, well put. You hit the nail on the head.

Of course, there was also a serious lack of vision and real leadership at the top as well, but that wouldn't matter with all the middle managers getting in the way.

Re: Carol Bartz Out at Yahoo; CFO Interim CEO

#67

Post by PakG1 » Wed, Sep 07, 2011, 3:21 AM UTC

JacobAldridge wrote: post #13

I wonder if Yahoo! lacks the vision of a founder to compare with Gates, Jobs & Woz, Branson, Larry & Sergey, even Zuckerberg? It's been described as listless and without vision or a clear direction for several years now. Particularly with more macro economic trends, now is a good time for CEOs and business owners to re-engage themselves and their teams with the original vision or intent of their business, to help con…

http://paulgraham.com/yahoo.html

I think says it best.

Re: Carol Bartz Out at Yahoo; CFO Interim CEO

#68

Post by jzawodn » Wed, Sep 07, 2011, 3:22 AM UTC

ethank wrote: post #4

Yahoo needs someone who can clearly articulate what Yahoo does. There is no "product" to draft behind, just a disjointed set of technologies which individually are great (as someone pointed out, YUI and Hadoop, etc), but holistically don't have any focus. Google had the same problem, but they are now shedding this.

In my 8.5 years working there, the "mission" of Yahoo that I came away with is to try to be everything to everyone--poorly.

Re: Carol Bartz Out at Yahoo; CFO Interim CEO

#69

Post by dpark » Wed, Sep 07, 2011, 3:32 AM UTC

xyahoo wrote: post #53

An ex-Yahoo here, using a throwaway account. Yahoo's biggest problem is the creamy middle layer of managers. They are usually lifers (as in, been at Yahoo for a decade), or fresh MBAs with a Stanford degree who think that just because they sat through Management-101, they know how products should be designed. This middle layer is like a Turkish harem. They're busy backstabbing each other, politicking and fucking thin…

> The list of Yahoo's problems are long; and C-level people are not high on that list. "Vision" is also not a problem for Yahoo, if they'd just let the engineers just do their fucking jobs!

I've got to disagree with this. No one inside or outside of Yahoo seems to be able to concisely state what Yahoo does. There are dozens of properties and various initiatives, but no real statement of purpose. There's too much confusion about direction, about what Yahoo's goals are, or should be. I don't think the internal guidance is clear enough, either.

I think this is a distinct C-level problem. And if managers aren't being held accountable, that a C-level problem, too.

Re: Carol Bartz Out at Yahoo; CFO Interim CEO

#70

Post by ethank » Wed, Sep 07, 2011, 3:34 AM UTC

jzawodn wrote: post #68

ethank wrote: post #4

Yahoo needs someone who can clearly articulate what Yahoo does. There is no "product" to draft behind, just a disjointed set of technologies which individually are great (as someone pointed out, YUI and Hadoop, etc), but holistically don't have any focus. Google had the same problem, but they are now shedding this.

In my 8.5 years working there, the "mission" of Yahoo that I came away with is to try to be everything to everyone--poorly.

Reminds me of my first meeting at Yahoo after I started at WBR.

I was a huge fan of delicious pre-acquisition and wanted to meet with Joshua to see if there was any way to tie music and our artist sites in with the service. I e-mailed him I think to setup a meeting.

We show up and our meeting is in the very, very back of the office in a conference room. Josh is there as well as a guy is his boss and another guy.

We find out this is the first time Josh had ever met his boss (this is about four months post acquisition) and the other guy didn't know why he was there, but the meeting had showed up on his calendar.

It was singularly awkward.

I used Yahoo back when it was still on the stanford.edu servers and called "David and Jerry's Guide to the World Wide Web"

I social engineered my way into the old wooden building when making a documentary on how people in the service sector were dealing with the "information super highway" in 1999 during a conference.

A lot of great people and great technology went into that company and came out of that company. I hope for at least legacies sake someone can figure out how to turn it around. The misguidedness is not new however, and I have lots and lots of stories from the last five years of dealing with them.