3 ms·

> I don't know how good D'Aloisio is, but he's not that good What does that even mean?

• Bartweiss 10y ago
  It means that if you're acqui-hiring, you're paying a massive premium to get good talent you couldn't get another way. I'm saying that nothing about Summly suggested that it was worth spending $30,000,000 for 18 months of the sole employee's time. I wrote it that way to point out that I'm not calling D'Aloisio a bad hire or a bad developer. He's got a good reputation, and Yahoo News Digest (his big project there) was actually really well received. Rather, it wasn't worth the commitment Yahoo made for him, because he wasn't taking on the kind of sweeping rework or major new project needed to help with the death spiral. It fit into the general pattern of grabbing shiny new things at high prices, without really chasing the outcomes in users or revenue that might have mattered.
• Gracana 10y ago
  That it doesn't matter how good they are; their skill could not explain the reason to spend that much money.