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I'm tired of the Yahoo policies PR fluff. When will we see any real software changes? Its Marissa this, Marissa that. Enough. Show me something from the Yahoo e

I'm tired of the Yahoo policies PR fluff. When will we see any real software changes? Its Marissa this, Marissa that. Enough. Show me something from the Yahoo engineering team. Edit This is also not groundbreaking or even new. The PR team is trying to spin the shitty telecommuting change of policy with an improved maternity/paternity leave. Not that an improvement is a bad thing itself.

greghinch 13y ago
You mean like the Flickr, Mail, and Weather app updates? I do hope you realize that building software takes time, particularly across a large co. like Yahoo. The policy changes are immediate effects which help formulate the company culture; the long term results are the products that will show up in the coming months and years.
- orangethirty 13y ago
  Those are just updates that were underway already. There has been nothing in terms of software ever since Marissa took over. She has done a lot of policy changes that have affected engineering. In a way that hurt morale. She has to have them ship something new developed under her administration. That will allow them to build trust between engineering and management. All I hear from Yahoo hackers is that they don't trust her. Shipping code can help that.
  - m_darkTemplar 13y ago
    Still in school, but when I visited Yahoo! Headquarters for a recruitment event everyone seemed to be in good morale. Of course it was for recruitment so they would be showing the best, but people there seemed happy and I saw a fairly wide range of offices. I saw changes to the food service in making it free and higher quality (which I can attest was excellent), and they were redesigning the offices while I was there, removing the cubicles and making a more open layout that you see at a lot of newer tech companies. Everyone I talked to legitimately thought that Marissa is bringing some much needed change to the company as far as I could tell, and I spoke to mostly software engineers, not PR people. Obviously opinions probably vary across the company and it's fairly large though.
    - orangethirty 13y ago
      I talk to a lot of them through email and they are not very convinced of the new management. They are just scared that she will go on a firing bent when financial goals are not acquired. They won't cut the management fluff or even take pay cuts. They will fire the people that write the code.
      - greghinch 13y ago
        Do they have any basis for those fears? I mean founded in her actions since coming on board. Clearly past Yahoo policies would justify those fears, but I don't see any signs that she would just arbitrarily cut engineering over management to meet financial goals. The one "negative" thing she's done since coming on board is cut remote working, and I'm not convinced that was really so bad. Yahoo needed fix some internal stuff about the culture, and it would be hard to do that when your talented people are spread out all over the place. I agree that the management fluff needs a serious trimming there, so hopefully by bringing all the engineering talent in house, and theoretically trimming management, they can adjust the culture to be more engineering focused, which is what everyone wants.
edouard1234567 13y ago
I'm not sure this is a PR coup, I think she simply changed the policy to attract all the talented women who tend to get pregnant in their 30s. It's true that this particular policy change is not revolutionary in itself but the fact that what Sheryl Sandberg and Marisa Meyer did at google is propagating to other large influential companies is revolutionary as it indicates this will soon become the norm.

greghinch 13y ago

You mean like the Flickr, Mail, and Weather app updates? I do hope you realize that building software takes time, particularly across a large co. like Yahoo. The policy changes are immediate effects which help formulate the company culture; the long term results are the products that will show up in the coming months and years.

orangethirty 13y ago
Those are just updates that were underway already. There has been nothing in terms of software ever since Marissa took over. She has done a lot of policy changes that have affected engineering. In a way that hurt morale. She has to have them ship something new developed under her administration. That will allow them to build trust between engineering and management. All I hear from Yahoo hackers is that they don't trust her. Shipping code can help that.
- m_darkTemplar 13y ago
  Still in school, but when I visited Yahoo! Headquarters for a recruitment event everyone seemed to be in good morale. Of course it was for recruitment so they would be showing the best, but people there seemed happy and I saw a fairly wide range of offices. I saw changes to the food service in making it free and higher quality (which I can attest was excellent), and they were redesigning the offices while I was there, removing the cubicles and making a more open layout that you see at a lot of newer tech companies. Everyone I talked to legitimately thought that Marissa is bringing some much needed change to the company as far as I could tell, and I spoke to mostly software engineers, not PR people. Obviously opinions probably vary across the company and it's fairly large though.
  - orangethirty 13y ago
    I talk to a lot of them through email and they are not very convinced of the new management. They are just scared that she will go on a firing bent when financial goals are not acquired. They won't cut the management fluff or even take pay cuts. They will fire the people that write the code.
    - greghinch 13y ago
      Do they have any basis for those fears? I mean founded in her actions since coming on board. Clearly past Yahoo policies would justify those fears, but I don't see any signs that she would just arbitrarily cut engineering over management to meet financial goals. The one "negative" thing she's done since coming on board is cut remote working, and I'm not convinced that was really so bad. Yahoo needed fix some internal stuff about the culture, and it would be hard to do that when your talented people are spread out all over the place. I agree that the management fluff needs a serious trimming there, so hopefully by bringing all the engineering talent in house, and theoretically trimming management, they can adjust the culture to be more engineering focused, which is what everyone wants.

edouard1234567 13y ago

I'm not sure this is a PR coup, I think she simply changed the policy to attract all the talented women who tend to get pregnant in their 30s. It's true that this particular policy change is not revolutionary in itself but the fact that what Sheryl Sandberg and Marisa Meyer did at google is propagating to other large influential companies is revolutionary as it indicates this will soon become the norm.