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

Re: Carol Bartz Out at Yahoo; CFO Interim CEO

#91

Post by xyahoo » Wed, Sep 07, 2011, 4:53 AM UTC

kamaal wrote: post #80

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…

I am from Bangalore, And I seriously don't understand this Bangalore and Beijing hate. Why do Americans assume all Chinese and Indians are fools? Aren't you people shooting yourself in the foot by assuming your competition is weak? Outsourcing works for a lot more factors than mere money. But money is a major factor. Here in India, we have usual set of good and bad engineers like everywhere . There a lot of very good…

I apologize if it appeared that I was hating on Bangalore (or Beijing). I was not. What I am against is outsourcing based on the simplistic math that you can get "3 for the price of 1" in Bangalore. When we give Bangaloreans(?) work based simply on price and not on their core competencies (and how the outsourced team will work with the rest of the company), then outsourcing won't work.

I feel that outsourcing should be done where it makes most sense. For example: if there's any work that needs to be done for the Indian (or South Asian) market, then by all means it makes sense to do it in Bangalore! Or if we have a team of engineers in Bangalore that are rockstars in Android development, then give them Android work!

Basically: outsource work to Bangalore if you know that it's the best place to do the work; not just because they're cheaper! I feel that Yahoo has been doing the latter.

Re: Carol Bartz Out at Yahoo; CFO Interim CEO

#92

Post by curiousfiddler » Wed, Sep 07, 2011, 4:56 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…

Incredible prejudice!

Re: Carol Bartz Out at Yahoo; CFO Interim CEO

#93

Post by xyahoo » Wed, Sep 07, 2011, 4:57 AM UTC

voidfiles wrote: post #41

omouse wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why not ask the employees who actually WORK on their products what the heck Yahoo's vision for the future should be? Crowdsource the company vision so you don't have to rely on someone like Steve Jobs magically appearing out of nowhere.

They do. There are numerous attempts internally at Yahoo to solicit feedback. I don't think they listen. Besides that people see such a sliver of what yahoo does overall that individual feedback like that can often be unhelpful at a corporate level.

A year or so ago, there was a survey done (we had such surveys every quarter) which asked the employees how much confidence they had in the top-level management.

The answer? Only 11% said they had confidence.

This is what our manager told us. She was so disgusted she didn't even share the summary that she was supposed to.

After that, they stopped the surveys. It's easier to kill the messenger, I guess.

Re: Carol Bartz Out at Yahoo; CFO Interim CEO

#94

Post by cft » Wed, Sep 07, 2011, 4:59 AM UTC

minikomi wrote: post #90

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.

So how is Yahoo still number 4 in ranking (according to Alexa).. Honest question - what drives so much traffic? Search?

I think yahoo mail. The feature diff between yahoo mail and gmail is not big enough to justify the switching cost for many people (lost archives, old friends and contacts need to be informed of email change)

Re: Carol Bartz Out at Yahoo; CFO Interim CEO

#95

Post by dpark » Wed, Sep 07, 2011, 5:00 AM UTC

minikomi wrote: post #90

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.

So how is Yahoo still number 4 in ranking (according to Alexa).. Honest question - what drives so much traffic? Search?

Yahoo produces a ton of content. I believe their Finance and Sports sites are #1. Autos is huge. Their news site is big. Their front page gets massive traffic. They have a ton of other sites as well. And this isn't spammy content farming. They really do have a ton of original as well as quality licensed content (e.g. AP stories). They do extremely well in the realm of content, and with audience engagement around that content. Add in Yahoo Mail, Personals, Answers (ugh), etc. They have a lot of very successful sites.

Re: Carol Bartz Out at Yahoo; CFO Interim CEO

#96

Post by joshu » Wed, Sep 07, 2011, 5:06 AM UTC

ethank wrote: post #70

jzawodn wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 f…

(Joshua)

I remember that meeting! I think it was actually the latest in a series of bungee-bosses.

Re: Carol Bartz Out at Yahoo; CFO Interim CEO

#97

Post by curiousfiddler » Wed, Sep 07, 2011, 5:12 AM UTC

kamaal wrote: post #80

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…

I am from Bangalore, And I seriously don't understand this Bangalore and Beijing hate. Why do Americans assume all Chinese and Indians are fools? Aren't you people shooting yourself in the foot by assuming your competition is weak? Outsourcing works for a lot more factors than mere money. But money is a major factor. Here in India, we have usual set of good and bad engineers like everywhere . There a lot of very good…

Another point is that most of these companies "also" derive part of their revenues from non US markets. I am sure that adds to their profits as well. It would be very informative if someone could come up with those figures as well. It will add a lot more perspective to the illogical India-China bashing.

Re: Carol Bartz Out at Yahoo; CFO Interim CEO

#98

Post by vishalkgupta » Wed, Sep 07, 2011, 5:14 AM UTC

Carol never clearly defined her strategy as CEO. It wasn't clear to her employees and it wasn't clear for investors. She may have had some big picture plan that would taken many years to achieve, but it didn't look that way.

It was clear that board wasn't willing to wait to find out. Which ever direction they go with a new CEO, here's hoping for an actual plan.

Re: Carol Bartz Out at Yahoo; CFO Interim CEO

#99

Post by clobber » Wed, Sep 07, 2011, 5:24 AM UTC

diego wrote: post #16

The problem is that Yahoo was born as a product that became obsolete quickly. It has no DNA anymore, it's just a collection of various media services. It's not a computer, or a piece of software, or a social network. It was a directory of web links. A library. It's doubtful that a Steve Jobs could come back to Yahoo and get it back in touch with its roots. IMHO, their best bet is to sell.

Whats Yahoo ever been about, though?

Even in the early days their search index was run by a third party (OpenText, then AltaVista, then Inktomi, then Google, now Bing) and most of their major properties like Yahoo Mail and Store were acquisitions like Four11 Rocketmail and Viaweb.

Just seems like Yahoo has been a long series of acquisitions.

Re: Carol Bartz Out at Yahoo; CFO Interim CEO

#100

Post by bluehatrider » Wed, Sep 07, 2011, 5:29 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…

I totally agree xyahoo. As soon as a high tech company pushes all it's techies off into the mushroom patch and forges ahead with marketers and promoters and B.S.ers leading the way it's all over. And I'm a big Yahoo fan. Followed it from the start and had one of the first @yahoo email addresses.