5 ms·

The morale problem is a symptom of bad leadership. It's not going to be fixed with more bad leadership.

by onewaystreet 11y ago

asdfologist 11y ago
Good leadership wouldn't have turned around MySpace. Sometimes, it's too late.
- colmvp 11y ago
  On the flipside, sometimes it seems like we rely on hindsight bias. Would we still be talking about Apple in 2015 if Jobs hadn't come back? Or Tesla if Musk hadn't taken over as CEO in 2007? Both companies had significant uphill battles. And if you had the foresight to imagine Apple in 2015 back in 1997, you're probably a rich man. Just hypothesizing but imagine if MySpace had focused its industry connections in the music industry to focus more on music instead of social networking, and pushed for an on-demand music streaming player for mobile and desktop. They had millions of dollars in the bank and a head start in the U.S. market over Spotify and Rdio. Or imagine if Blockbuster video had either taken up Netflix's offer to be bought out or had invested in online streaming long before Netflix. I'm not saying it's easy or always viable or that luck doesn't play a role, but I often think we discount the potential for a company to still exist today because the only outcome we know of is the outcome that happened rather than the potential of alternate decisions.
Bud 11y ago
Steve Jobs could come back from the dead and he would be utterly helpless to revive the abject piece of crap that is Yahoo.
- HillaryBriss 11y ago
  Warren Buffett once wrote: With few exceptions, when a manager with a reputation for brilliance tackles a business with a reputation for poor fundamental economics, it is the reputation of the business that remains intact. It's not clear to me that Yahoo's business has poor fundamental economics because I don't quite know what business it's in.
  - rodgerd 11y ago
    > It's not clear to me that Yahoo's business has poor fundamental economics because I don't quite know what business it's in. Buying, say, tumblr didn't help with that because it's not like a free blogging engine would appear to be a great money spinner. Suggesting you want to make it less R18 then suggests you didn't look too hard at what people use it for. Similarly, when flickr has a lot of people who are prepared to pay to host photos spattering ads all over it seems like... a lack of understanding of how it works. flickr makes me particularly sad. The user authentication fuck up was appalling. The ads were moronic. It only needs a couple of minor tweaks, some of which (like albums for groups) to make itself a Facebook alternative on the side.
  - nickpsecurity 11y ago
    It unfortunate she took the reigns of this business. I hoped her talent could pull off something big but Yahoo was really run too hard into the ground for her to have much of an effect. Sad given where it started and the potential it had.
- codexjourneys 11y ago
  Not so sure about this. My understanding is that Steve Jobs would walk around the company and personally fire anyone he believed wasn't doing a valuable job. (EDIT: He didn't hire McKinsey to do this.) He wanted true believers who were adding value ONLY. Not sure that has happened at Yahoo!. Second, Steve Jobs focused the company around one or two important initiatives at a time. That was probably his greatest value add. He had a phenomenal sense for which projects were the right initiatives. The original Bondi Blue iMac came out pretty quickly after his return -- not quite a year after Steve had been named interim CEO. That's FAST. Yahoo! needs to be streamlined (remove poisonous/slack elements), focused (one or two key projects ONLY, kill the others) and fast (release the key projects in 2016). They also need to pick the RIGHT projects. To do this, like another commenter said, they need to remember why they love the Internet. Otherwise they're dead.

The morale problem is a symptom of bad leadership. It's not going to be fixed with more bad leadership.

asdfologist 11y ago

Good leadership wouldn't have turned around MySpace. Sometimes, it's too late.

colmvp 11y ago
On the flipside, sometimes it seems like we rely on hindsight bias. Would we still be talking about Apple in 2015 if Jobs hadn't come back? Or Tesla if Musk hadn't taken over as CEO in 2007? Both companies had significant uphill battles. And if you had the foresight to imagine Apple in 2015 back in 1997, you're probably a rich man. Just hypothesizing but imagine if MySpace had focused its industry connections in the music industry to focus more on music instead of social networking, and pushed for an on-demand music streaming player for mobile and desktop. They had millions of dollars in the bank and a head start in the U.S. market over Spotify and Rdio. Or imagine if Blockbuster video had either taken up Netflix's offer to be bought out or had invested in online streaming long before Netflix. I'm not saying it's easy or always viable or that luck doesn't play a role, but I often think we discount the potential for a company to still exist today because the only outcome we know of is the outcome that happened rather than the potential of alternate decisions.

Bud 11y ago

Steve Jobs could come back from the dead and he would be utterly helpless to revive the abject piece of crap that is Yahoo.

HillaryBriss 11y ago
Warren Buffett once wrote: With few exceptions, when a manager with a reputation for brilliance tackles a business with a reputation for poor fundamental economics, it is the reputation of the business that remains intact. It's not clear to me that Yahoo's business has poor fundamental economics because I don't quite know what business it's in.
- rodgerd 11y ago
  > It's not clear to me that Yahoo's business has poor fundamental economics because I don't quite know what business it's in. Buying, say, tumblr didn't help with that because it's not like a free blogging engine would appear to be a great money spinner. Suggesting you want to make it less R18 then suggests you didn't look too hard at what people use it for. Similarly, when flickr has a lot of people who are prepared to pay to host photos spattering ads all over it seems like... a lack of understanding of how it works. flickr makes me particularly sad. The user authentication fuck up was appalling. The ads were moronic. It only needs a couple of minor tweaks, some of which (like albums for groups) to make itself a Facebook alternative on the side.
- nickpsecurity 11y ago
  It unfortunate she took the reigns of this business. I hoped her talent could pull off something big but Yahoo was really run too hard into the ground for her to have much of an effect. Sad given where it started and the potential it had.
codexjourneys 11y ago
Not so sure about this. My understanding is that Steve Jobs would walk around the company and personally fire anyone he believed wasn't doing a valuable job. (EDIT: He didn't hire McKinsey to do this.) He wanted true believers who were adding value ONLY. Not sure that has happened at Yahoo!. Second, Steve Jobs focused the company around one or two important initiatives at a time. That was probably his greatest value add. He had a phenomenal sense for which projects were the right initiatives. The original Bondi Blue iMac came out pretty quickly after his return -- not quite a year after Steve had been named interim CEO. That's FAST. Yahoo! needs to be streamlined (remove poisonous/slack elements), focused (one or two key projects ONLY, kill the others) and fast (release the key projects in 2016). They also need to pick the RIGHT projects. To do this, like another commenter said, they need to remember why they love the Internet. Otherwise they're dead.