Yammer CEO won't hire anyone from Yahoo who doesn't quit in next 60 days • Hacker News Board

Re: Yammer CEO won't hire anyone from Yahoo who doesn't quit in next 60 days

#171

Post by talmand » Thu, Mar 15, 2012, 5:23 AM UTC

I'm assuming he's also unwilling to hire people from the top 10 or even maybe top 20 internet-related companies, based on my totally unscientific study, in the world? Because, in case he hasn't noticed, everybody is suing everybody these days. I guess those millions of employees world-wide should just all quit in the next 60 days and move to Silicon Valley since the job market is apparently so hot there.

I guess Jonathan Ive should quit Apple and go work for Yammer to save his soul and be considered a good person again.

I feel he's just a loudmouth that's lucky his company isn't big enough or well-known enough for him to get slapped down by his investors and/or board and have his twitter account take away. Regardless of how you feel about his opinion or Yahoo's actions, this is a bad move and a potential PR disaster on his part.

Plus, who would want to work for him now he's shown himself to be the type of person to blame people for actions they had no part in?

And I'm sorry, but anyone who thinks every single employee of Yahoo is worthless, soulless, evil, or whatever, is a total freaking moron.

Re: Yammer CEO won't hire anyone from Yahoo who doesn't quit in next 60 days

#172

Post by notJim » Thu, Mar 15, 2012, 5:24 AM UTC

dlss wrote: post #72

Looks like the other comments on here are anti-Yammer. I guess I'll write up why this doesn't seem unreasonable to me. 1. If you read the article, he was apparently talking about people with options and control (Executives, Lawyers, Engineers), rather than janitors or other people who might not have as much say in who they work for. 2. The CEO states that his reasoning is that who you work for and support indicates w…

I have a lot of problems with this story, and with your arguments in favor of it.

  > the talent market in Silicon Valley is so hot right now,
  > the only folks staying at Yahoo are the ones who have 
  > stopped caring

I guarantee you that there are people working at Yahoo! solving difficult and interesting problems, which many of us would envy. Not only that, but there are also going to be people working there now who value stability and have a sense of loyalty to the company they work for. Not everyone is going to jump ship for the new hotness every 3 years, and software engineering is not a monoculture where we all share the same values. I think it's incredibly problematic to broadly assert that anyone working at a given company is not worthy of employing.

  > 3. Yes the article / his announcement is sensational. But look at the 
  > general idea: expecting engineers to refuse support to   business doing 
  > immoral things is taught in every university ethics class. Why not include
  > ethics questions in the interview?

So Yammer should only allow a single interpretation of ethics? What about someone who doesn't believe this move is unethical? Yahoo is after all a business, and according to some, the ethical way for a business to behave is to maximize shareholder value [I do not agree with this, for the record, but some people have definitely said it here and elsewhere.] Apparently Yahoo believes this move will achieve that goal. [Remember, we're looking at ethics here, not whether this is a good business move.]

Additionally, if one can make a good case for his/her stance on this issue, does that mean that he/she will be considered as an exception to the no-hire rule? If the CEO of Yammer wants employees who will correct him on ethics issues, then certainly having strong critical thinking skills, and ability to present a compelling argument for an issue should be far more important than being able to "Patents are bad, mmkay?" And having a diversity of viewpoints on these issues would surely also be a benefit, would it not?

Re: Yammer CEO won't hire anyone from Yahoo who doesn't quit in next 60 days

#173

Post by stickfigure » Thu, Mar 15, 2012, 5:28 AM UTC

shingen wrote: post #48

guimarin wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It can be done. Look at the US. Ever had to fill out, 'Not a member of the Nazi Party between 1933-1945? The US Citizenship test in no way makes the US look like a 'serious jerkwad.'

If the US Citizenship test assumed all Germans from 1933-45 were volitional Nazis, then yes it'd be a jerkwad test.

If you collect a paycheck from the Gestapo, it doesn't really matter whether or not you call yourself a Nazi.

Re: Yammer CEO won't hire anyone from Yahoo who doesn't quit in next 60 days

#174

Post by tim_h » Thu, Mar 15, 2012, 5:55 AM UTC

subwindow wrote: post #145

tptacek wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure. But now what? The problem here is that a huge number of talented people almost certainly do work for Yahoo without ever paying attention to the news cycle. Lots of talented people don't have startup ambitions; they bust their ass from 9-5 and come home to their families and their woodworking and charcuterie hobbies. Sure, they probably all have a sense that Yahoo isn't on a great trajectory, but they have no ur…

I wouldn't want to hire the person you describe. This is simply a more visible indicator that a person doesn't care about the company they work for. That's fine for giant corporations, but amazingly deadly for startups.

Just curious, what specifically is the indicator that a person doesn't care for the company? I didn't get that impression from reading the GP.

Is it not paying attention to the news cycle? Or knowing that the company is on a bad trajectory but still working there? Surely it's not the focus on work-life balance.

I could see myself working at Yahoo. I bet they still have interesting problems to work on. Yahoo Research does awesome stuff with computational advertising. Hypothetically speaking, would this opinion disqualify me from your hiring consideration?

Re: Yammer CEO won't hire anyone from Yahoo who doesn't quit in next 60 days

#175

Post by subwindow » Thu, Mar 15, 2012, 5:56 AM UTC

temphn wrote: post #152

subwindow wrote: post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wouldn't want to hire the person you describe. This is simply a more visible indicator that a person doesn't care about the company they work for. That's fine for giant corporations, but amazingly deadly for startups.

Exactly. It's amazing how many people are saying "well, there are lots of programmers who don't pay attention to the latest technology, you can't just refuse to hire them". But you can and you should. Anyone at Yahoo/MS today is (on average) already under suspicion of being 2nd tier and a notch below a Facebooker/Googler. And those Yahoo engineers who stick through this one will tend to be the 3rd tier. They aren't g…

To be fair to MS, there's lots of interesting stuff going on there. I have a friend who's working on the .NET CLR, and it would be foolish to think that he's not working on extremely awesome stuff.

At the same time, I don't know of anything like that at all going on at Yahoo. And he doesn't go home at 5pm.

Re: Yammer CEO won't hire anyone from Yahoo who doesn't quit in next 60 days

#176

Post by pessimizer » Thu, Mar 15, 2012, 6:09 AM UTC

meepmorp wrote: post #150

pessimizer wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's really really hard to avoid Godwin when discussing the responsibility of the rank and file of an organization for the actions of the whole. It's the model case.

> It's really really hard to avoid Godwin when discussing the responsibility of the rank and file of an organization for the actions of the whole. This is a deeply idiotic statement. In fact, it's quite easy to talk about how much responsibility Yahoo employees have for the intellectual property lawsuits started by management, and yet not make use of comparisons to the Nazis. When the roads into Sunnyvale have signs…

No, it's not. It's a debate commonly held when people claim to be innocent of the actions of an institution that they were a part of, and the source of modern debates about the ethics that apply are sourced in the writings of Arendt about the subject. You're not the only person in the room that realizes that Yahoo aren't the Nazis, Facebook aren't the victims of WWII, and Yammer certainly isn't Nurnburg, so cut the name calling and histrionics.

Just because naked mole rats aren't ants doesn't mean you can't refer to ants when talking about them, silly.

Re: Yammer CEO won't hire anyone from Yahoo who doesn't quit in next 60 days

#177

Post by subwindow » Thu, Mar 15, 2012, 6:13 AM UTC

tptacek wrote: post #146

subwindow wrote: post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wouldn't want to hire the person you describe. This is simply a more visible indicator that a person doesn't care about the company they work for. That's fine for giant corporations, but amazingly deadly for startups.

The nicest thing Patrick McKenzie ever said about us was: If I were looking for a day job, I wouldn't be looking for a day job any more: they're friendly, happy people who get social license to join the Dark Side, do smart stuff all day, and then go home while it is still light out. I have a set of things I need to get done. It is my job as a company owner to help constrain and groom the subset of what's getting done…

I have no idea where you got the idea that I want people to be burned like charcoal. I'm absolutely not in favor of that. Work hours are the least important factor in why I wouldn't hire the theoretical employee you described. It's the lack of ambition- the lack of enthusiasm towards the field.

In a startup you can't have unambitious employees- regardless of how talented they are. You have to have people who challenge the way things are done or the company will grow stagnant and won't seize opportunities to pivot.

I think people should care. If you spend half of your waking life at work, you should be proud of what you do and the people you work with. Pride in your work is one of the single largest contributors to happiness (more so than family, but that is largely tangential to the point).

Quite frankly I don't think that most of the people left at Yahoo care. If they cared, or had ambition, or had enthusiasm towards the web, they would leave.

Re: Yammer CEO won't hire anyone from Yahoo who doesn't quit in next 60 days

#178

Post by res0nat0r » Thu, Mar 15, 2012, 6:20 AM UTC

potatolicious wrote: post #35

brown9-2 wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But there is a difference between punishing the company management that made the decision and employees that had nothing to do with the decision.

If my employer suddenly got into the business of mulching orphans for fertilizer, I'd consider it my personal responsibility to quit/move on as soon as possible. Yahoo employees should get no blame for decisions they didn't make, but they do have to bear the responsibility for tacitly condoning this behavior. Considering the current job market for software engineers in the Bay Area, the whole "but I need to pay rent"…

I find posts like this and the OP to be great posturing for the internet masses and really silly. 99% of us out there who work for a company larger than some small startup can find policies or things we don't agree with in our corporate bureaucracy. So we all should be self employed, unemployed or work for a company of < 10 people until we find The One Righteous Company?

Re: Yammer CEO won't hire anyone from Yahoo who doesn't quit in next 60 days

#179

Post by subwindow » Thu, Mar 15, 2012, 6:20 AM UTC

tim_h wrote: post #174

subwindow wrote: post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wouldn't want to hire the person you describe. This is simply a more visible indicator that a person doesn't care about the company they work for. That's fine for giant corporations, but amazingly deadly for startups.

Just curious, what specifically is the indicator that a person doesn't care for the company? I didn't get that impression from reading the GP. Is it not paying attention to the news cycle? Or knowing that the company is on a bad trajectory but still working there? Surely it's not the focus on work-life balance. I could see myself working at Yahoo. I bet they still have interesting problems to work on. Yahoo Research…

It's not this particular issue. I don't care all that much about patents. It's mostly that Yahoo has been a zombie corporation for a long while and has key symptoms of not being able to foster creativity or innovation.

There may be interesting things going on inside Yahoo, but I'm not aware of them. Every single thing that I found interesting about Yahoo has withered or completely died in the last 5+ years.

Re: Yammer CEO won't hire anyone from Yahoo who doesn't quit in next 60 days

#180

Post by daeken » Thu, Mar 15, 2012, 6:20 AM UTC

tptacek wrote: post #161

larrys wrote: post #157

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"please consider dropping us a note" People in the startupsphere (who in many cases have been doing things since, what, 2007?) fail to understand the amount of capable accomplished people there are that have never read HN or know who Arrington or Wilson or Graham are. In their mind these people simply aren't cut from the right bolt of cloth to work at a startup. I mean they don't know what the word pivot means and go…

Yup. Give those people 2 days to learn a new instruction set for an architecture that's only ever synthesized onto an FPGA, then reverse firmware compiled to that architecture back to an exploitable overflow. They'll do it. And they won't even use Mongodb to do it.

You're simply measuring passion in a different way. The (very, very small number of) people who can do this are very passionate about the work, as we both know, and this shines through in the work they do in and out of the day job.

But let's say you saw someone that was coming from a security consultancy that started doing interesting, challenging work and then turned into a shop doing nothing but the same web pentests day in and day out. Don't you think you'd seriously question whether they're capable of doing the challenging work, or still hungry for that kind of work? I know I'd think twice about it. I think that's why people are so against the people left at Yahoo; it's a company that's been on a downward trajectory for a long while, and is actively doing Bad Things (TM). It's not unreasonable to expect that someone that's ok with that (or blind to it) isn't going to be a fantastic hire, but that doesn't mean there aren't certainly exceptions.