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Carol Bartz Out at Yahoo; CFO Interim CEO

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Re: Carol Bartz Out at Yahoo; CFO Interim CEO

#101

Post by [deleted] »

tyahoo wrote: post #82
kamaal wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

OP is right. I am worked at yahoo till recently and I am an Indian and I don't think people in Bangalore or Beijing are bad. During my career in India and in US I met quite a few good engineers . In early days of Yahoo! India the quality of Indian engineers are pretty good. Off late they are just hiring whoever send in a resume. I know people who are interviewing these candidates even when they say no the manager is…

[deleted]

Re: Carol Bartz Out at Yahoo; CFO Interim CEO

#102

Post by sjs »

kamaal wrote: post #89
prodigal_erik wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've had the not-uncommon US developer's experience of working with useless bottom-feeding con artist outsourcers, the kind who throw out deliverables and then drag their heels explaining why there are still syntax errors in code which had allegedly been tested. I've also had the privilege of working with some really sharp people in Hyderabad—the difference is that we had to open an office there and hire full-time to…

Yes, I agree on this. There is a huge problem of hiring good folks here. In fact most of the work coming to India is somewhat in an area where you are required to maintain and keep systems up and running. In other words a few feature additions but a lot of maintenance and bug requests. A lot of work is also on the lines package management, something like working on SAP, or IT support or even testing projects. I would…

I think one key factor in the average quality of workers found in North America and elsewhere is the social aspect of career choice. In North America there's a pretty strong culture of pursuing jobs that people are interested in and enjoy. From what I've heard about India I think that there are very different social pressures that encourage people to choose careers for other reasons. Maybe this is not so, it's pure speculation on my part.

However if we assume that a similar percentage of people will be interested in computers no matter where they reside then there should be more than enough quality Indian and Chinese devs lurking somewhere. Perhaps they are more easily lost in the bigger sea of devs, but similarly they should also shine and stand out that much more as well. Could it be that those hunting for the lowest price keep stumbling on the less qualified devs and then perpetuate the myth that devs in India or China are all lousy?

(edit: I'm unsure if there actually is a higher average quality of developer in North America, it may just be a perceived difference. Raise your hand if you live in North America and have met at least one "developer" who you cannot believe is actually employed as one.)

Re: Carol Bartz Out at Yahoo; CFO Interim CEO

#104

Post by rorrr »

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…

You just described every large corporation I have ever worked at. Middle management is backstabbing each other, while ignoring advice and ideas from the developers, and driving projects into the ground with no repercussions. I never understood that.

Re: Carol Bartz Out at Yahoo; CFO Interim CEO

#105

Post by braindead_in »

cft wrote: post #94
minikomi wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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)

In fact Yahoo mail has more subscribers than Gmail. Hotmail is the biggest among the three.

Re: Carol Bartz Out at Yahoo; CFO Interim CEO

#106

Post by fuzionmonkey »

tjmc wrote: post #87
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.

I've always seen Yahoo as a "me too" company - the Carl's Jr of the online titans. If they've ever been the best at something they've never stayed there for long. The decline began when they decided search wasn't their core business and portals were the way to go. Who would want to work there? Even Microsoft are more innovative these days. Having said all that, thanks for buying Viaweb off PG guys. At least some Yaho…

At least Carl's Jr is good.

Re: Carol Bartz Out at Yahoo; CFO Interim CEO

#107

Post by idlewords »

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?

Non-tech users love the homepage, along with the other stuff mentioned here (sports, classifieds).

Re: Carol Bartz Out at Yahoo; CFO Interim CEO

#108

Post by goombastic »

tyahoo wrote: post #82
kamaal wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

OP is right. I am worked at yahoo till recently and I am an Indian and I don't think people in Bangalore or Beijing are bad. During my career in India and in US I met quite a few good engineers . In early days of Yahoo! India the quality of Indian engineers are pretty good. Off late they are just hiring whoever send in a resume. I know people who are interviewing these candidates even when they say no the manager is…

Partly true, however there is another aspect to it as well. It's just that Yahoo and other blue-label firms have an exalted notion of who should work with them. They tend to go for the fashionable set; the english speaking, high fiving crowd of self labelled developers who cant code themselves out of a paper bag.

I know of at least one "dynamite" programmer whom Yahoo! India rejected because the guy didn't have a graduate degree. As usual, he was too busy coding to go get a degree. Well guess what, it's been pretty interesting working with him.

Re: Carol Bartz Out at Yahoo; CFO Interim CEO

#109

Post by kamaal »

sjs wrote: post #102
kamaal wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, I agree on this. There is a huge problem of hiring good folks here. In fact most of the work coming to India is somewhat in an area where you are required to maintain and keep systems up and running. In other words a few feature additions but a lot of maintenance and bug requests. A lot of work is also on the lines package management, something like working on SAP, or IT support or even testing projects. I would…

I think one key factor in the average quality of workers found in North America and elsewhere is the social aspect of career choice. In North America there's a pretty strong culture of pursuing jobs that people are interested in and enjoy. From what I've heard about India I think that there are very different social pressures that encourage people to choose careers for other reasons. Maybe this is not so, it's pure s…

For a lot of time now, Engineering and Medicine have been the dream careers to chase in India, the reason is simple. Before the FDI reforms started in 1992, the only way some one could make it financially big in our society was through ancestral property, a big family businesses, or plainly doing your engineering and medicine and then settling down some where in the west(immigrating).

After the FDI boom, the IT sector here exploded. People from middle class background became millionaires in no time. In fact that's how Indian IT got a fat inefficient layer of management throughout the country. Very soon there was an impression that you have to get into software to earn that high. So the mad rush to get into software started.

This is where the quality dilution occurred. A lot of clueless people got promoted to be managers. Because technology was not considered a good career growth path. Also there is a mad rush here to visit some foreign country. These are generally called 'onsite' opportunities. Trust me, you have no clue what sort of politics runs across to get those opportunities. You have a lot of good developers but they never get their due. Neither rewarded nor appreciated properly.

Good developers don't sort of get the stuff they deserve here. But projects generally run on work by 'task masters'. In a typical team you will have few little really good folks and a little average folks the remaining hardly do their job. In fact when we talk of good devs that's the kind of folks that we are talking about here. But they are available in pretty good numbers.

Coming to manufacturing, IT support. That's really more of process and procedure based. So I won't comment on that, may be that's a difficult area to compete with. Because there you have very little intelligent things to do.

Re: Carol Bartz Out at Yahoo; CFO Interim CEO

#110

Post by gcb »

xyahoo wrote: post #91
kamaal wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

To be honest, this happens with locals too.

often companies rather hire 3 'available ones' instead of paying 3x for a good one that would add immeasurably more value over the other 3 combined.

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