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Yahoo Announces Resignation of Jerry Yang

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Re: Yahoo Announces Resignation of Jerry Yang

#51
post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yahoo is way under valued. Yahoo was considering selling its stakes in Yahoo Japan and Alibaba Group for $17 billion. Yahoo's current market cap is $19 billion PLUS $2 billion cash. Does that somehow make the value of its U.S. assets negative?

What value that Yahoo chooses to assign to its own divisions is kind of besides the point.

Those are not divisions, they are shares in entirely separate, publicly traded companies. The valuation is market valuation -- not a number made up by Yahoo.

Re: Yahoo Announces Resignation of Jerry Yang

#52
post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think that was said from a shareholder/owner perspective. Microsoft's offer was for more than double Yahoo's current price per share, and that was 4 years ago.

A CEO has fiduciary responsibility for the property of the shareholders. A CEO can have other perspectives if he or she wishes, but the shareholder perspective better be high on the list.

Technically, a CEO doesn't have fiduciary duties. The board of directors does, and the CEO runs the company/reports to the board. I know what you mean, of course.

Re: Yahoo Announces Resignation of Jerry Yang

#53
post #32
post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yahoo is much more popular among seniors, a valuable advertising demographic.

While I agree with the premise that seniors are a valuable demographic, the problem with Yahoo here is that there is nothing compelling about Yahoo that would make it the default choice for the next generation of seniors. Yahoo grabbed a lot of users back when the web was young, and this is a cash cow for them, but it has have never figured out how to compete and grow their audience since.

Are seniors actually a valuable demographic? I agree large numbers of users are great, but I thought the general thinking was seniors, even if relatively rich, have established and difficult to change purchasing patterns; thus, 18-35, teens, etc. are worth a lot more to advertisers.

Re: Yahoo Announces Resignation of Jerry Yang

#54
post #29
post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your children also probably don't know what Petrochina is but like Yahoo that doesn't make them an unprofitable company. The nice thing about no one knowing who you are is that 22 year old college geeks don't get the idea to 'disrupt' your industry and instead focus on 'disrupting' a more well known brand like Facebook. I'd suggest educating your children as to how to make money instead of brand recognition.

You can't disrupt Yahoo as a random 22 year old geek starting a company. The revenue streams and traffic base of Yahoo is extremely diverse. Unless you plan to simultaneously disrupt web email, search, financial portals, sports, news, generalized all purpose portals, and on and on.

Yeah but in this case the diversity is a weakness. You can't replace Yahoo! because they don't do one thing really well, they do a bunch of things mediocrely well. What is the Yahoo! brand? What do they do anymore? No one really knows, even though they do a ton, so how could you even aim to replace them at all? At best you could aim to replace Yahoo mail, and that seems like a very reasonable (though still ambitious) startup goal.

Re: Yahoo Announces Resignation of Jerry Yang

#55
post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A CEO has fiduciary responsibility for the property of the shareholders. A CEO can have other perspectives if he or she wishes, but the shareholder perspective better be high on the list.

Technically, a CEO doesn't have fiduciary duties. The board of directors does, and the CEO runs the company/reports to the board. I know what you mean, of course.

Interesting, thanks for the correction. Do you know if this varies by jurisdiction, or is it pretty much universal?

Re: Yahoo Announces Resignation of Jerry Yang

#56
post #42

Maybe I'm in the minority here, but I don't think "fixing" Yahoo ought to be as difficult as people make it seem. It's still a well regarded brand, and many millions rely on it for email and as a homepage. It's finance section remains extremely popular. They purchased Sportacular, the app I use to keep track of games. Theyve just been very poorly managed. They acquired companies like delicious and Flickr, one they le…

Maybe I'm in the minority here, but I don't think "fixing" Yahoo ought to be as difficult as people make it seem.

I worked for a semi-dysfunctional semiconductor company and so I think I have some perspective on what it takes to "fix" a company like Yahoo.

I think the biggest reason a company becomes like Yahoo has less to do with senior management and more to do with the fact that the company is filled with low to mediocre quality middle managers and employees. Mediocre managers aren't very good at their job, so it seems like they make up by playing politics. Once politics is rampant, what gets done is not what works the best, but what helps you or your team get ahead in the political game. At this point you start bleeding talent because good people prefer not to work in an irrational workplace. You also lose the focus and initiative you need to keep a successful product successful.

The worst part is that there's nothing you can really do to fix this. You can try to fire the bottom 10%, but if you only have a problem with the bottom 10%, you're not yahoo. You probably need to fire the bottom 50%, but then you wouldn't have enough personnel to keep all your assets going AND some of that 50% would also be good employees who lost out in the last edition the political olympic games.

Any well-intentioned change in process or product focus by top-management will also inevitable morph into something completely different thanks to your low-quality middle managers who won't understand what you're trying to do, but will understand that they need to step up the politics to keep their jobs.

I guess the point of my rant is that a big company is like an emergent system and you can't really fix a dysfunctional emergent system by changing a small number of things that are part of that system.

Re: Yahoo Announces Resignation of Jerry Yang

#57
post #42

Maybe I'm in the minority here, but I don't think "fixing" Yahoo ought to be as difficult as people make it seem. It's still a well regarded brand, and many millions rely on it for email and as a homepage. It's finance section remains extremely popular. They purchased Sportacular, the app I use to keep track of games. Theyve just been very poorly managed. They acquired companies like delicious and Flickr, one they le…

Google has algorithms, Yahoo! should have editors and journalists. For all these attempts to "fix" Yahoo! never once a new message, advertising campaign, real brand refresh other than a minor logo and homepage refresh. I'm talking the new lifestyle tech feels like the Chrome kids growing up commercials. Like Apple's FaceTime for families type connection with users.

Re: Yahoo Announces Resignation of Jerry Yang

#58
post #42

Maybe I'm in the minority here, but I don't think "fixing" Yahoo ought to be as difficult as people make it seem. It's still a well regarded brand, and many millions rely on it for email and as a homepage. It's finance section remains extremely popular. They purchased Sportacular, the app I use to keep track of games. Theyve just been very poorly managed. They acquired companies like delicious and Flickr, one they le…

Maybe I'm in the minority here, but I don't think "fixing" Yahoo ought to be as difficult as people make it seem. I worked for a semi-dysfunctional semiconductor company and so I think I have some perspective on what it takes to "fix" a company like Yahoo. I think the biggest reason a company becomes like Yahoo has less to do with senior management and more to do with the fact that the company is filled with low to m…

"Swat Teams" of vetted talent to handle the most prized assets and initiatives. Let the cruft keep up day to day, apply proven talent to the most important initiatives piece by piece. ie. Apple and the iMac, then iPod, iBook, iWorks, Final Cut etc etc.

Re: Yahoo Announces Resignation of Jerry Yang

#59
post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A CEO has fiduciary responsibility for the property of the shareholders. A CEO can have other perspectives if he or she wishes, but the shareholder perspective better be high on the list.

Technically, a CEO doesn't have fiduciary duties. The board of directors does, and the CEO runs the company/reports to the board. I know what you mean, of course.

Wrong. CEOs have fiduciary duties.

Re: Yahoo Announces Resignation of Jerry Yang

#60
post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Technically, a CEO doesn't have fiduciary duties. The board of directors does, and the CEO runs the company/reports to the board. I know what you mean, of course.

Interesting, thanks for the correction. Do you know if this varies by jurisdiction, or is it pretty much universal?

Sorry, I don't know. I think that's the case for all public companies in the US, at least (I don't know if it applies to limited parterships, private corporations, s-corporations, etc). I searched to confirm CEOs were not necessarily fiduciaries before I posted, and I did see that officers could be fiduciaries (eg, for internally managed pension funds - though it didn't have to be the CEO).
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