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

Post by lilsunnybee » Wed, Mar 27, 2013, 3:50 PM UTC

potatolicious wrote: post #270

michaelochurch wrote: post #237

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 e…

Post by DanBC » Wed, Mar 27, 2013, 4:26 PM UTC

patrickk wrote: post #272

DanBC wrote: post #244

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Many years ago I watched a tv documentary (probably BBC with the Open University) about business consultants. There was a small - medium engineering company. These firms tend to be split between white collar office and management work, and blue collar shop floor work. The consultant went in, had a bit of a chat with the management, and then went onto the shop floor. After a bit of resistance he got a lot of great inf…

If you find a link to that documentary I'd love to see it.

Post by michaelpinto » Wed, Mar 27, 2013, 5:08 PM UTC

bobwaycott wrote: post #267

michaelpinto wrote: post #187

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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.

Post by rhizome » Wed, Mar 27, 2013, 5:37 PM UTC

michaelochurch wrote: post #250

jiggy2011 wrote: post #248

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Maybe it's not just about talent, you could certainly hire amazing talent for a lot less than $30 million. I imagine this kid will disappear into Yahoo and emerge again in 3 years time more mature and having been groomed for a leadership role by Mayer etc. He will be the "lead developer" for some new product they have spent $serious_R&D_budget on and will make another promotional video where he talks in a charming Br…

I'm an old fart (29) and don't have a British accent, but I'll do the three-year CEO-protege thing for a mere $10 million and kick it's ass (as long as you listen to me; if not, then you're wasting money). Bidding war's on! (If you say $9.99 million, then you are a fucking asshole.)

Post by rhizome » Wed, Mar 27, 2013, 6:16 PM UTC

dsfasfasf wrote: post #160

rollo_tommasi wrote: post #89

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If those PhD are really so smart, they should have had the foresight to be born to Morgan Stanley executives, like the Summly kid.

Because I'm feeling a bit (just a tiny bit, I feel I'm almost beyond that) envious I almost want to celebrate your comment. Although there is a lot of true into this we have to admit that even kids born into riches are not that much more likely to be a world success. Because unless you have the will/desire to succeed you probably won't get that far. (Going to an ivy league school and working a nice cushy job is not e…