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What's Actually Wrong with Yahoo's Purchase of Summly

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Re: What's Actually Wrong with Yahoo's Purchase of Summly

#261

Post by rayiner »

snowwrestler wrote: post #207
rayiner wrote: post #180

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People don't really realize it, but the mid 1950's through mid 1970's, besides being the golden age of the American economy, was also the golden age of American innovation, and much of it was bankrolled by DOD money (SRI is, of course, a major defense contractor). Not only was the infrastructure around us mostly built during that time (the highways, power plants, etc) but most concepts in computing: programming langu…

I think that undervalues the innovation that goes into taking a new technology and turning it into a widely available, affordable product. That is not easy, and without that step, no invention is going to change the world very much. I also think it undervalues the role of the market in creating the capital to fund these activities, and the many different companies and universities (many private) who compete to spend…

I'm not really disagreeing with you, at least in the sense that I do agree that market economies create wealth and wealth is a necessary pre-requisite for funding research. What I think I'm getting at is that I disagree with the common trope that market competition creates fundamental innovation. I think market competition makes companies slaves to the bottom line, fighting tooth and nail in the dirt just to survive. To the extent that the market creates innovation, it does so in companies well-insulated from market competition (monopolies, oligopolies, etc). The decline of Hewlett Packard is a great example. When they became just another hardware company, competing on price in printers, PC's, etc, they ceased to be innovative.

Interesting reading: http://www.slate.com/articles/technology/technology/features.... You should really buy a copy of Tim Wu's book to appreciate Vail's line of thought.

Re: What's Actually Wrong with Yahoo's Purchase of Summly

#263

Post by talmand »

rayiner wrote: post #176
RickHull wrote: post #171

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> From your pic you look like a brogrammer > Or am I missing the sense in which we're using "bro" here? I'll bite. You are completely missing the sense of bro grammer. Brogrammer refers to behavior and attitude and not looks or activities.

I think looks and activities is inextricable with "bro"-ness. You're not slaying the LES bar circuit unless you have a certain look along with a certain behavior and attitude.

I feel sad for anyone that has to experience an interview session with you, if such an event happens, because you clearly have no issue with guessing a person's life and behavior from one small photo that you are seeing out of context. Even though the person in question stated that you are in fact wrong in almost every way of what you think you see in the picture. In fact, I'm sensing a small bit of projection in this because your statements make no real sense at this point, so you appear to be lashing out at a stranger for no apparent reason. Perhaps jealousy?

Re: What's Actually Wrong with Yahoo's Purchase of Summly

#264

Post by talmand »

cpeterso wrote: post #169
talmand wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why, because he's wearing sunglasses? Color of his shirt? He has short hair? Is near water? Which is the trigger?

Yes.

Please post a small photo of you in a somewhat generic setting that I don't know the story behind so that I too can play the game of guessing a person's life experiences and attitude based on that one small example.

Re: What's Actually Wrong with Yahoo's Purchase of Summly

#265

Post by wwkeyboard »

ProblemFactory wrote: post #239
michaelochurch wrote: post #193

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have a hard time believing that they'd pay $30M to gain five programmers. That's a fairly standard acq-hire, actually. It's not just Yahoo that's paying over $5 million per head. It's ridiculous, when you consider that the value of an employment relationship (which can be ended by either party at any time) is set at 30-60 times the annual salary. (Just think about it: how is a relationship that lasts 4.5 years on a…

It's not even five programmers - according to the news, only the founder and 2 employees are joining Yahoo. This is acquisition is fantastic news for the founder, but I'm still at a loss on how it can possibly be a good business decision for Yahoo. I don't believe in "publicity" and "getting in the news" and "making Yahoo hip again" - for $30m, you could do much better. I don't really believe it's for talent either -…

SRI accidentally granted Summly a too broad and cheap license for their summarisation technology, and it's cheaper than licensing from SRI directly.

ding! ding! ding! I think we have a winner here.

Re: What's Actually Wrong with Yahoo's Purchase of Summly

#266

Post by foobarqux »

mattbarrie wrote: post #228

I doubt the acqui-hire was for $30m. I would believe probably $3m, structured as $1m each over 4 years, with each person getting 100k in the first year, 200k in the 2nd, 300k in the 3rd and 400k in the fourth. Lots of these "acqui-hires" get reported in the press at some stupid number. I know a couple that were reported way off. The original journalist says "it sounds better", and then all the secondary sources just…

Are the reported numbers that you are familiar with outright falsehoods or are they distortions like an unrealistic earn-out provision?

Besides spreading the amount over many years what other tricks are used to bump up the reported number?

Re: What's Actually Wrong with Yahoo's Purchase of Summly

#267

Post by bobwaycott »

michaelpinto wrote: post #187
bobwaycott wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have some rather strong misgivings when purchased talent != high quality engineers where software product/company acquisitions are concerned. There are some excellent professionals out there with a far more rigorously proven and solid track record of knowing how to reach an audience. You're suggesting the 17-yr-old & 2 compatriots have proven themselves to possess $30-million-worth of reaching-an-audience skill? [e…

This snot-nosed brat is a mere 27 years old, and I would say that if you could have grabbed him for $30 million it would be worth it: http://www.time.com/time/photogallery/0,29307,1630529_138070...

Hahaha. Touché.

To be fair, however, I think we'd all agree that his accomplishments by that point were of a significantly higher caliber.

Re: What's Actually Wrong with Yahoo's Purchase of Summly

#268

Post by parnas »

it's about comfort zones, my 17-yo will take out the trash, but only to the screened in porch, not to the can. He also won't walk around the corner to get the can if it is still in the driveway, he will leave the trash exposed to racoons on the deck near where the can is supposed to be. Comfort zones...

Re: What's Actually Wrong with Yahoo's Purchase of Summly

#269

Post by freyr »

michaelochurch wrote: post #243
WickyNilliams wrote: post #232

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's hard to say this without sounding insulting or belittling, but I'm genuinely curious... What are your credentials? You don't have to justify yourself to some random guy on the internet (me), but a few of your comments mention you're in the "1 in a 100" category, so I'm wondering what you've done that would be so valuable to Yahoo. Is it that you're a talented engineer or more? I probably sound like a complete di…

This is a really good question. If you're looking to assess personal software skill, here's where I defined the software scale: http://michaelochurch.wordpress.com/2012/01/26/the-trajector... It's from 0.0 to 3.0, but the majority of professional software engineers are between 1.0 and 2.0. Average is about 1.1-1.2, and 1.5 is seriously good; it means you're starting to have sound multiplier, infrastructural contribut…

Interesting credentials, but I prefer to rank professional software engineers on the Freyr scale, which ranges from 'Fink Melange' to 'Banana Whelp'. It's a complex system based on myriad factors, and even discounts for spatial-temporal mislocations and organizational dissynergies.

Right now, I'm a 'Piebald Lummox', which places me squarely in the 99.3 percentile. In other words, I command top dollar and you're an idiot if you don't hire me.

If you need any further credentials, I'll tell you about my inverse Graftenberg scale of managerial excellence. I'm currently at -ξ.

Re: What's Actually Wrong with Yahoo's Purchase of Summly

#270

Post by potatolicious »

michaelochurch wrote: post #237
MortenK wrote: post #223

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If it's that easy why don't you do it? Surely a self-proclaimed 1 in a 100 programmer could bang out a product ripe for aquihire in the time it took to write all these "don't care, but still" posts?

I never said that it's easy . We both know that it's not "easy" to get acq-hired for $30 million. It's also not easy to win the Powerball, even if any idiot has a chance. It is, however, a sign of something wrong in the economy. When a $6-million-per-engineer acq-hire (the team, not the product, is being bought) is going down, the company is paying about 50 years of an engineer's salary for an employment relationship…

You're discounting the multiplicative value of the team.

A lone wolf programmer, even if he/she is an ace, is pretty limited. An entire team - spanning the entire stack from design, backend, frontend, etc, is many times more powerful than its individual constituent employees.

High-performing teams are also extremely rare, and extremely hard to build. It's not hard to build a team that can get its shit together long enough to ship a product. It's really hard to build a team that can ship at the top of the field, consistently, repeatedly.

I don't know enough about Summly to know if this is the case, but if they fit this description, then the acquisition doesn't strike me as completely ludicrous - just a little bit.

Of course, this logic doesn't fly in reality because it's practically a guarantee that the slow, stodgy, MegaCorp that acquired the lean, high-performing startup team is going to stomp all over whatever it was that made them tick. I've seen this happen too many times to believe that there is another possible outcome.

But it seems that every stodgy, slow MegaCorp believes they're different, and this time they'll adopt a hands-off approach and let the team work its magic. Then reality sets in, some middle manager crashes it all while fighting for his/her fiefdom, and the whole exercise is forgotten about until the next acqui-hire.

Anyway, theoretically an engineer can be worth $1.5mm a year if they're in a proven, performing team that's operating a couple of standard deviations above the norm, in a competitive field. That same engineer would be worth far less if they came alone.

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