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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

#141
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?

The yahoo frontpage is still the starting destination for a large number of people. Without trying to draw conclusions about why people just like to use the frontpage as a jumping of place.

Re: Carol Bartz Out at Yahoo; CFO Interim CEO

#142
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…

It's not a hate of people. It's hate that is created by process. I worked on Yahoo Mail's frontpage section for awhile. While I was developing the newer version for more advanced browsers the older version was being developed by a team in banglore. As far as I could tell they were writing code just as well as we were. The reason I hated working with people in banglore was that we were on exactly opposite schedules. I would have days long fights about bugs over bugzilla because I couldn't ever just have a conversation. When we did have meetings they were always at the least awesome time like 8:00 pm on sunday night.

I don't begrudge them working in their daytime either. Why should an engineer have to work through the night. I just think it exposes a problem with outsourcing work.

Re: Carol Bartz Out at Yahoo; CFO Interim CEO

#143
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 left yahoo almost a year ago. My experience was that I didn't even know what middle management did. I refere to it as the cloud. There was me, my team, and my manager. Sometimes I would know who my managers manager was, but passed that I didn't really every understand who made decisions to do what.

This might be a middle management problem, I can't be sure. I don't think most people at yahoo can be sure.

Re: Carol Bartz Out at Yahoo; CFO Interim CEO

#144

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…

Don't forget – Jerry Yang actually returned to Yahoo! for a period. And completely fucked the dog, screwing up a potential acquisition and being replaced by Bartz. Say what we will about Valleywag, they covered this period pretty well: BSing the troops: http://gawker.com/valleywag/tech/yahoo/jerry-yangs-fireside-... Ballmer writing a polite letter killing the acquisition prospects: http://gawker.com/386898/ "Hey guys…

> screwing up a potential acquisition

Right. Letting Microsoft acquire Yahoo was the best thing to do...

Because, like I said then, two bricks float better than one.

What Yahoo needs is a CEO with a clear vision and accountability at all levels. That's not what Microsoft is known for.

Re: Carol Bartz Out at Yahoo; CFO Interim CEO

#145
post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, at least a CFO has a good chance of keeping the lights on for a few months while the board finds a new CEO.

"Keeping the lights on" doesn't sound too nice, although it's likely exactly what he's going to do..

Is Yahoo in danger of going under, it looks like they bring in about $1billion a year, do they need more than that? or are the profitable?

Re: Carol Bartz Out at Yahoo; CFO Interim CEO

#146
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…

> Why do Americans assume all Chinese and Indians are fools?

Why are you jumping to that conclusion? All I read was how fucked up the management structure was and how Yahoo managed to consistently hire bad managers who hired bad engineers who drove projects into the ground. It just happened that they found a lot of bad engineers in India. (And you admitted yourself that there are plenty of bad engineers in India, just like everywhere else).

> The US taught us ideals of capitalism

"Do as I do not as I say" is perhaps the new motto. What we teach is propaganda. That is for bed-time stories for kids, not for the real world. If you look at how external trade, tariffs, protectionism, subsidies for our various industries work, you'll quickly understand that it is most definitely not a 'free' and 'open' market. When we say 'free' trade and 'globalization' we actually mean 'you open your markets so we can flood it with our companies' goods'.

> I am from Bangalore, And I seriously don't understand this Bangalore and Beijing hate.

Again, why do you say there is Bangalore hate? There is hate at bad management decisions. Apparently Yahoo has managed to consistently hit the majority of bad engineers and an ex-employee was watching his company's projects go to shit because of it. Dunno, seems like a valid thing to hate...

> What you must fear is good hardworking folks coming at cheap prices.

Hardworking is not good enough. Compensating by lack of knowledge by doubling the effort, and writing, 10x as many lines of code, is the wrong way to do it. It is a sure way to fail. In a more sarcastic way it would mean "When unsure how to proceed, just keep churning large piles of code!"

Programming is not picking potatoes. You cannot substitute 1 good programmer with 10 average ones. It just doesn't work that way. When you pick potatoes, you can say, if I hire 10 pickers and they pick x potatoes per hour then I'll get these many potatoes -- awesome. Programming is like composing music -- a hundreds average composer monkeys won't be able to compose a piece that one good composer can. It just doesn't work that way. It is inherently a creative process.

> In fact we love America for the help they offer us.

Sorry to disappoint, I seriously doubt genuine altruistic motivations are the cause of this "help". India might perceive it as such, but I seriously doubt that's how American (or any) external policy works.

Re: Carol Bartz Out at Yahoo; CFO Interim CEO

#148
post #136
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…

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.co…

>> I hope I get proven wrong and in a decade we have Infosys quality product companies in India.

A couple of honest questions. Do you work for Infosys? What exactly do you mean by Infosys quality?

About the 'low quality engineers over here' part, it's a topic already beaten to death. And you are true about the exchange rate part. In the end, with bean counters in control, that's what governs everything.

Re: Carol Bartz Out at Yahoo; CFO Interim CEO

#149
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…

Those same group of people happen to storm and migrate to At&t for more infestation ...

Re: Carol Bartz Out at Yahoo; CFO Interim CEO

#150
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…

Those same group of people happen to storm and migrate to At&t for more infestation ...
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