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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

#131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What would Google gain from acquiring Yahoo? Yahoo has little search technology of its own and many services that overlap with existing Google services. I think Yahoo's properties (and users) might be a better fit with Facebook.

For one, Yahoo would obtain significant talent. And they would gain an enormous amount of users that use Yahoo's services. I'm curious, why do you think Yahoo's properties would be a better fit with Facebook?

That is not how acquisitions work.

Re: Carol Bartz Out at Yahoo; CFO Interim CEO

#132

I wonder if Yahoo! needs old Jerry Yang (the one with fire in his belly in his early days) back as Twitter did with Jack Dorsey.

At what point in Yahoo's history did Jerry Yang have "fire in his belly"?

What highlights in Yahoo's history does this cover?

Re: Carol Bartz Out at Yahoo; CFO Interim CEO

#133
post #80
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…

The problem, kamaal, is that to get reliably high quality software engineers and designers in India you actually do have to spend nearly what you'd be paying in most of the US (the whole country, excepting NYC, Boston, LA, Bay Area, Seattle, and a few other hot spots) and it's much more challenging to recruit than it is in the US. There are problems with candidates cross shopping offers, professional interviewees, horrendous private sector communications infrastructure, governmental dysfunction, inflation, sexism, and familial pressure to strive for ever-increasing job titles in household name companies.

I don't mean to say India doesn't make sense, and I employ about 225 folks in Chennai right now, but it is apples to oranges and decision makers do not often have the right data to make informed choices over where to hire. As an example of something completely removed from quality of personnel, the time difference can wreak havoc on its own, especially when the stakeholders and developers are in different hemispheres. This holds not just for the development process but also in post-deployment support. It naturally (and unfortunately) leads to situations where the one or two engineers in the same general location as the stakeholders end up usurping the responsibility from the remote staff just out of convenient and self-consciousness of the 1-2 day lag they've been burned by over and over again. I could write a book on this subject (I've gone from being an individual contributor developer to a senior director reporting to the CIO over the last 7yrs and have seen nearly everything), but let's not belabor it. The executive summary is that offshoring is hard and too many managers only look at it from a direct labor cost perspective, which is folly.

Yes, we live in a globalized world and it will only continue to shrink. At the point where everyone has a phone or tablet with wireless unfiltered gigabit internet everywhere they need it, we'll be in good shape.

Re: Carol Bartz Out at Yahoo; CFO Interim CEO

#134
post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I think this is a distinct C-level problem. And if managers aren't being held accountable, that a C-level problem, too. The C-levels are content with directors who "manage up" instead of looking past them to see what's really happening on the ground.

The C-levels just need to look at stock performance and profit to see there's a problem. There is nothing that a director level person should be able to say to a C-level to make them feel comfortable.

Stock performance is a not a very good indicator, as it reflects emotion more than anything else. Profits and profit-margin, OTOH, are ones to keep an eye on all the time - whatever they do, you better know why they are doing it. If you lose control of both, you shouldn't wait for the chairman to fire you - help the board find a replacement and get out.

Re: Carol Bartz Out at Yahoo; CFO Interim CEO

#136
post #80
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…

My friend you mean well. But there is a quality problem in India. There is volume (i.e. high numbers of engineers). But quality is bad on an average and that's the honest truth.

To prove my point. Let's look at the topcoder country rankings [At HN, perhaps I don't need to explain what topcoder is. But if I need to then in one word. Its a place where you practice Dynamic programming :-) ]:

http://community.topcoder.com/stat?c=country_avg_rating

No. of red programmers in India are just 3: http://community.topcoder.com/tc?module=AlgoRank&cc=356

Now just compare it to China: http://community.topcoder.com/tc?module=AlgoRank&cc=156

Or Russia: http://community.topcoder.com/tc?module=AlgoRank&cc=643

The volume of engineers thing caters to service industry very well. And the service industry mainly thrives for one reason alone. Don't listen to all the jargon all the titans of industry say. The reason is only one:

And that is:

1$ = 45 Rupees.

Service Industry is good in a way that it helps people have financial independence in a matter of 2 or 3 years. But some how, it has stayed there. Is there an Infosys like product company in India?

So there is clear lack of vision amongst the leaders in Indian IT industry. In other words very few high quality leaders. And all seem to be quite happy with the success they have achieved and now out to serve the nation. ... I hope I get proven wrong and in a decade we have Infosys quality product companies in India.

So although xyahoo is gracious enough to apologize. In practice it may be the case, that some exceptions apart, you will get low quality engineers over here.

I think, its the culture, which has been the issue.

It can be fixed but few things need to be done:

1) People have to stop using IITs and IIMs in the same sentence.

2) B Techs at IITs should want to continue with Masters at IITs, and not apply to US univs

3) More entrepreneurs have to stop cashing out midway (I often wonder, could bazee.com have been India's alibaba?)

4) The entrepreneurs have to move from a trader mindset to a creator mindset

5) More creators have to do their own startup than just feel pride in working for Google/Yahoo/Amazon

6) The VCs (in general) need to speak like tech-educated persons. Not act like fools who would rather invest in Real estate (one needs to control their urge to spill coffee on their suits)

PS: I noticed that I went on a tangential rant ... completely off topic. But I speak almost all of the above from experience.

EDIT: Added some spacing to make the points readable.

Re: Carol Bartz Out at Yahoo; CFO Interim CEO

#138
post #87
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…

> the Carl's Jr of the online titans

I wouldn't call Yahoo by far the best and most delicious of the online titans.

Re: Carol Bartz Out at Yahoo; CFO Interim CEO

#139
post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Yahoo Sports is an excellent sports journalism outlet and probably the only serious competitor to the ESPN monopoly. They broke the story on the Miami recruiting scandal, one of the largest NCAA violations in history, after doing extensive in-depth research.

Re: Carol Bartz Out at Yahoo; CFO Interim CEO

#140

Maybe Steve Jobs left as CEO of Apple to run Yahoo???

Not to many people would want to punish Jobs in this way but it is the only important question. How would Jobs run Yahoo? Well, he wouldn't have mortgaged the search; he would have demanded that it be the best.
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