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Yahoo Announces Resignation of Jerry Yang

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Re: Yahoo Announces Resignation of Jerry Yang

#61

Post by demallien »

schraeds wrote: post #58
microarchitect wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I actually work in exactly this type of swat team. We were all hired at well above standard payrates at my large company to build the next generation product. The response from the existing teams was immediate - they saw us as a threat, and started doing everything they could to make our project fail. In the end they succeeded in gimping the product by simply giving us interfaces that just couldn't do what a good product needed. The swat team was dragged into mediocrity. Now many of those rather expensive hires are actively looking to move elsewhere.

Moral of the story - building a star team in an existing company is a good way of building resentment about that team and is unlikely to breed success.

Re: Yahoo Announces Resignation of Jerry Yang

#62

Post by xxpor »

demallien wrote: post #61
schraeds wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"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.

I actually work in exactly this type of swat team. We were all hired at well above standard payrates at my large company to build the next generation product. The response from the existing teams was immediate - they saw us as a threat, and started doing everything they could to make our project fail. In the end they succeeded in gimping the product by simply giving us interfaces that just couldn't do what a good pro…

Why didn't they give you the power to demand things from other teams, lest they be fired?

Re: Yahoo Announces Resignation of Jerry Yang

#63

Post by tsotha »

matwood wrote: post #46
bfe wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Pretty much any offer to acquire a significant public company is going to be made at a significant premium to the share price at the time of the offer. Saying MS offered to acquire at a significant premium reduces to saying merely that MS made an offer to acquire.

The fact that MS made an offer to acquire at all helps make Yangs argument regardless of price. There is so much talk of fiduciary duty while ignoring that MS has the same duty to its shareholders. MS must have seen value in Yahoo at that time and offered a significant premium rather than wait for Yahoo to continue to fall and possibly get picked up by someone else. Or perhaps before Yahoo turned the corner and becam…

Just because the company might fit into Microsoft's road map at $33/share doesn't mean it fits into anyone else's. Microsoft needed portals it could use to draw eyes to perennially flagging MSN, and Yahoo has some really popular pages (Yahoo sports, weather, and finance - really the most valuable part of the company) that would have fit nicely.

I doubt Yahoo would have ever been worth that price to Microsoft, but even if it was, the offer doesn't necessarily mean Microsoft expected Yahoo could flourish or even survive as an independent company. I doubt too many people can cogently sum up what Yahoo does, and I'm not sure any of them work for Yahoo.

Re: Yahoo Announces Resignation of Jerry Yang

#65

Post by tsotha »

teyc wrote: post #24
fleitz wrote: 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.

Does anybody else get what fleitz was trying to say here? 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.

Nobody bothers trying to catch the losers?

Re: Yahoo Announces Resignation of Jerry Yang

#66

Post by chime »

xxpor wrote: post #62
demallien wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I actually work in exactly this type of swat team. We were all hired at well above standard payrates at my large company to build the next generation product. The response from the existing teams was immediate - they saw us as a threat, and started doing everything they could to make our project fail. In the end they succeeded in gimping the product by simply giving us interfaces that just couldn't do what a good pro…

Why didn't they give you the power to demand things from other teams, lest they be fired?

You can demand a functional API but you cannot demand a reliable service. That is what they've been unable to provide in the first place.

Re: Yahoo Announces Resignation of Jerry Yang

#67

Post by xyahoo »

microarchitect wrote: post #56
dr_ wrote: 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…

You hit the nail on the head. Mediocre, petty middle managers are the algae that are sucking the oxygen out of Yahoo.

I may get jeered for saying this, but a non-trivial amount of it was a result of Jerry. He kept his buddies around in high places for too long, and the rot set in. There were VPs in Yahoo who contributed absolutely nothing (and probably are still around, but I left). But they were always blocking progress just to stroke their own egos. Once you have nepotism and incompetence at the top, it just flows down naturally and the next thing you know there is widespread politics and infighting between teams. It becomes a feedback loop; the good people leave, and are replaced with buddies of the current incompetents.

The way to fix this is to actually make the problem worse for a while, by segregating the groups into independent units. Then you fix each of these units, one at a time. Then you bring them back into the fold.

Can anyone there do it? I doubt it. Most of the decision makers are too busy playing politics.

Re: Yahoo Announces Resignation of Jerry Yang

#68

Post by fleitz »

teyc wrote: post #24
fleitz wrote: 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.

Does anybody else get what fleitz was trying to say here? 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.

What I'm saying is that you can easily get yourself into the 1% with out having to make a huge name for yourself and if you want to get REALLY rich it's also possible to do without huge branding. Although YHOO and MSFT in the tech press are 'dying' businesses in the 'real world' they are hugely profitable.

If you build yourself a business that puts you into the 1% with out making a huge name for yourself you're less likely to have your revenue stream threatened because most people aren't even thinking of competing with you.

Re: Yahoo Announces Resignation of Jerry Yang

#69

Post by fleitz »

steve8918 wrote: post #43
fleitz wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Death spiral? Please don't get your financial information from techcrunch. I'd suggest checking public market data which suggests that in the last few years has massively increased its profitability Net income for YHOO 2010 1,231.66 m 2009 597.99 m 2008 418.92 m 2007 639.15 m

This is the danger of relying on a single financial measure to determine the health of a company. That's like only using a person's weight to determine if they're fat or skinny, when it also depends on how tall they are, their gender, the amount of muscle they have, etc. Their net income may have increased, but they did it by selling businesses (Hotjobs and Zimbra) and cutting costs (sales and marketing and product d…

Conversely you could argue that they cut unprofitable fat that while bringing in revenue did not bring in profit. Hotjobs and Zimbra don't strike me as particularly profitable.

Also, often times the best outcome for shareholders is to wind down the business and allow them to reinvest the profits, which so far is not an action that YHOO has taken.

Re: Yahoo Announces Resignation of Jerry Yang

#70

Post by [deleted] »

schraeds wrote: post #58
microarchitect wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

[deleted]
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