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

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

#191

Post by kamaal »

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.

I don't get the start up hype. Start ups are great. But not all start ups are great. Similarly not all big companies are bad.

There are a certain things only a big companies can do, Big companies put man on moon, put satellites into orbits, invented the first mobile phone, build mainframes, manufacture drugs that save billions of lives on planet etc.

Minus some very bad places, if you can't do great work where your are now. You won't do it any where else.

There are a lot of brilliant people who work in big corporations on things that are important. You may not see them or their work as upfront as Google's homepage. But every time you take your medication, every time you swipe your credit card. Some one some where is building stuff that makes such a thing possible.

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

#192

Post by fpgeek »

bproper wrote: post #142
shingen wrote: post #33

While it's a perfectly fine choice to ostracize Yahoo for their actions, Yammer's CEO is going to end up looking like little more than a hypocrite at the least, and maybe a dipshit, if he doesn't apply the same rules to all companies equally based on behavior. The odds the CEO will apply the same rule to all other companies acting with patent belligerence? Approximately zero. They'd need a substantial piece of tracki…

When the patent system is so fundamentally broken, and will take years to fix through political means, drastic measures have a certain logic to them. Are there a lot of other public companies in SV that have a patent portfolio the size of Yahoo who are going after non-public companies with broad, web 2.0 patents? I think you could count on two hands the number of software companies with the patent portfolio the size…

MSFT isn't already doing the same in mobile?

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

#193

Post by fpgeek »

moocow01 wrote: post #36

This tactic leaves a really bad taste in my mouth. Yes patent abuse needs to be dealt with, yes Yahoo is now apart of the abuse and it is sad. But firing a rocket at Yahoo employees by telling them they need uproot their lives or otherwise they will be black listed from employment, with hopes that other companies will follow along is disgusting and says more about Yammer than Yahoo. Look, yes Yahoo needs to take it i…

They're both terrible, but I'd way "weaponizing hiring" is worse than "weaponizing patents". At least with patents, you're not directly targeting people (just the things they build and the companies they work for).

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

#194

Post by patio11 »

subwindow wrote: post #177
tptacek wrote: post #146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 challeng…

If they cared, or had ambition, or had enthusiasm towards the web, they would leave.

A similar heuristic applied to me would have returned NOHIRE approximately 80% of the days during my working career and, critically, 100% of the days I was actually available for hire (+). There exist at least a few companies looking for caring, ambitious, enthusiastic employees at which somebody similar to me would be a pretty good fit. Isn't that a fairly silly heuristic next to attempting to measure e.g. ambition or enthusiasm?

On the other hand, if your company is just drowning under a deluge of qualified programmers willing to work for peanuts at the moment, and you get 5 star-spangled resumes thrown over the transom every day, feel free to be picky.

+ Joel Spolsky had a great article back in the day about how the best prospective are on the public employment markets essentially never. This plus the general market economics argument that you're most likely to find value by exploiting a difference between the true value of something and what other people value it as suggest to me that if there were a rock that Silicon Valley culturally scorned I would be checking under it very carefully looking for juicy wor... OK, the metaphor breaks a little bit, but you get the idea.

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

#195

Post by Robin_Message »

I'm not sure whether to mention this, but here goes. I refused to help a company I worked for create a patent, despite the large cash incentive to do so. I didn't want to have my name on a patent for two reason: firstly, I thought companies, especially startups, would increasingly see even engineers who collaborate with the patent system in a negative light. Yammer has proved me right.

Secondly, I didn't want to be personally responsible for making the patent situation worse. Worse? Yes, because despite the assertion made that obviously a good company like ours would only use patents defensively, this was not backed up with any public statement to that effect, nor would even that be binding in the future when management changed or the patent portfolio was sold. Every defensive patent can be used offensively.

The suggestion of a defensive silicon valley patent pool (perhaps owned by some kind of internet foundation), more rights for inventors to control how their patents are used, and pressuring engineers not to collaborate in the creation of bad patents would be a good way out of the current madness without requiring a total overhaul.

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

#196

Post by solutionyogi »

patio11 wrote: post #194
subwindow wrote: post #177

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 challeng…

If they cared, or had ambition, or had enthusiasm towards the web, they would leave. A similar heuristic applied to me would have returned NOHIRE approximately 80% of the days during my working career and, critically, 100% of the days I was actually available for hire (+). There exist at least a few companies looking for caring, ambitious, enthusiastic employees at which somebody similar to me would be a pretty good…

The article Patrick is referring to:

http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/FindingGreatDeveloper...

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

#198

Post by efsavage »

robryan wrote: post #42
efsavage wrote: post #34

This seems a bit of a broad swath for my taste, as Yahoo is a big place, but when screening resumes, someone listing their software patents is an automatic strike 1 and 2 in my book.

I think it is a bit unfair as a policy, unless then used those patents themselves. While not ideal, right now it would be silly not to attempt to register defensive patents given the resources to do so.

I don't search to see if you've ever filed for one, but putting it on your resume to me says that you want to work for a company that promotes them. The day may come when I have to file defensive patents of my own, but I'll never brag about it.

And as jongraehl said, there's still one strike left :)

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

#199

Post by andrewparker »

Forget about Yahoo's dumb patent trolling decision for a second...

If you're still working at Yahoo today that sends a clear message to me about how you value innovation, product quality, thought leadership, and other important assets. As an employee you're making an explicit choice that the company you work for merits spending your most valuable asset: your time.

I have been wary of anyone with Yahoo on their resume for the past two years, and will be more wary going forward. This patent troll mess is just another data point in that calculus.

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

#200

Post by laacz »

Unrelated question. Is it normal to notify your employer of leaving 60+ days in advance, or is it just USA feature? In Europe there is a common practice (and legally binding, if not agreed otherwise upon notifying your employer) of 30 days notice. I'm curios (sorry, if this qualifies as an offoptic).
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