4 ms·

I think the strategy is to get as many new decent developers outside the yahoo echo chambers, in an effort to change the working culture inside the company. Fo

by pavs 13y ago

I think the strategy is to get as many new decent developers outside the yahoo echo chambers, in an effort to change the working culture inside the company. For many years Yahoo suffered from mismanagement of CEO with short term goal to appease shareholders as opposed to building a company based on strong workforce and values. Despite all the PR speech by the previous CEO, I never felt that the previous leadership really knew what the hell they were doing. One of the first thing Mayer had to do was stop the culture rot within the company, and you will see that a lot of her decisions, whether its buying up other companies and making new rules around favorable working conditions, is targeted on building a strong group of core developers. This obviously takes a lot of time, there is no magic bullet to fix culture rot. Mayer is from Google school of thought, so she knows a thing or two on how good working environment works. You will see that while Google has a strong leadership to guide the company, a lot of its products and services started from and driven by not the leadership, but their developers on their 20% project. So to put it in short, Yahoo is not in a position like Google where they can dictate long term strategy without getting its bases in order and fix decades of rotting. I think in the next 12 months or so will be interesting time to see what comes out of Yahoo.

badclient 13y ago
I think the strategy is to get as many new decent developers outside the yahoo echo chambers, in an effort to change the working culture inside the company. Unless I'm wrong, qwiki had 9 employees. To pay ~$5M/developer seems incredibly expensive. Yahoo could simply offer $500,000/yr and I'd reckon they'd attract talent at same caliber or better than qwiki. In that sense, this seems like a disastrous acquisition if purely for talent.
- pavs 13y ago
  I am not going to pretent to know how hiring process on big companies like yahoo/google works but here are some of the reasons I think for a company in Yahoo's position acqui-hire is the best way to go: - In general, top developer are more likely to work for more interesting companies with interesting problems to solve with good pay to boot. I think most good developer would rather work for Google or their own company than work for Yahoo. Since mooching top developers from Google is out of the question, acqui-hiring seems to be the next best option. - You can't play with 500k/yr strategy because they are other top companies with deeper pocket and can throw more money at employees than yahoo, also because it creates a bad precedent, where current employees who might be more talented but getting 1/5th of the pay. It also artificially increases values of developers IMO. - Getting acqui-hired employees from small companies/start-ups means hiring people who used to working under pressure and delivering/shipping. This might not always be the case for Yahoo current group of people. People from outside the eco-chamber might help them change the working culture. - They had to pay that amount, doesn't mean thats how much they value they employees, it also means thats how much they had to pay the investors in order to get employees to work for them.
  - badclient 13y ago
    - You can't play with 500k/yr strategy because they are other top companies with deeper pocket and can throw more money at employees than yahoo Those same top companies can throw more money at start ups as well. They don't because they don't think they are worth that much or much at all. also because it creates a bad precent, where current employees who might be more talented but getting 1/5th of the pay. It also artificially increases values of developers IMO. Nothing creates worse precedence than being a yahoo employee of few years and finding out the new guy in the next cubicle became a millionaire because he came via a start up that didn't go anywhere. THAT's demoralizing as it gets and tells existing yahoo employees that if you want to make millions, you should leave yahoo because that's what the guy next door did.
    - pavs 13y ago
      I think you are very misinformed. - because Google and other big companies do pay crazy amount for acqui-hires, more often and more consistently than yahoo does: http://www.siliconbeat.com/2013/03/28/silicon-valleys-biggest-acqui-hire-er/ http://www.siliconbeat.com/2013/03/28/silicon-valleys-bigges... The reason Yahoo is more talked about because of Mayer and she is trying to pick up a sinking ship. A valiant u-turn of a dying silicon giant by an ex-googler story is more interesting than Google/MS/Facebook/Twitter acquiring to keep their strong position. - Being successful in startup takes a special kind of talent (with lotsa luck), if every joe/moe could do it, they would. Nothing is stopping any yahoo developer to leave their safe job and take on this challenge, but chances are they won't and most people don't.
      - badclient 13y ago
        1. You've proven my own point true: that even after competition from others, yahoo can still continue buying companies. Similarly, I'd argue yahoo can hire great employees for lots of money(but less than aqui hire) even if google etc decide to compete with them in matching salaries. 2. Start ups are hard. But when so many joe schmoe start ups that have created so little value get acquired for 50M, all of a sudden it lowers the barrier for start up success and makes more people want to do it.
zimpenfish 13y ago
They're not going to change the working culture by hiring "smart" people - that was one of the problems in the first place... (That and the byzantinely fractal multi-layered management structure.)
- pavs 13y ago
  I agree with you that only hiring smart people is not going to fix any problem. But thats not the only thing thats happening. After reading dozens of Quora discussions on Yahoo over the last few months, I am getting the impressions from current employees (and former employees who are in touch base with their former colleges) is that there are also very big changes on how these smart people are being managed. I remember reading about: - "All hands on deck weekly meetings." - More emphasis on what the employees want and need to perform better and taking care of those solutions. - Open door policy, if anyone needs to talk to higher ups. We don't know other details, but I am guessing these are positive changes.
  - Swannie 13y ago
    Nice... references would be much, much appreciated!
    - pavs 13y ago
      Its a lot of reading, but I would start with this two: http://www.quora.com/Yahoo/Is-it-true-that-Yahoo-is-better-to-work-for-now-June-2013 http://www.quora.com/Yahoo/Is-it-true-that-Yahoo-is-better-t... http://www.quora.com/Yahoo/Why-do-people-still-work-at-Yahoo http://www.quora.com/Yahoo/Why-do-people-still-work-at-Yahoo You can also check out related questions and their search on yahoo related recent question, lots of activity by current/former yahoo employees, both anonymous and on record.
Swannie 13y ago
Culture is set by the execs, and their senior managers, not the developers. Buying up new companies won't change the culture unless they are integrated into a new management structure. Sure, a good junior or mid-level manager can maintain a strong culture in their team/organization. BUT only with senior exec support - otherwise they will fall under corporate oversight for everything - from facilities policies (free snacks, beer, soft drinks, breakfasts? huge desks? breakout rooms?), HR processes (hiring, performance, salary increases, role changes), IT processes (hardware/software freedom), etc. There are talented managers who can present a view of full cooperation, but still do their own things - though again, to pull that off, they usually have some senior exec support. The more contact with the rest of the org. the more its culture seeps in. Just think about it in terms of code - you write some code as a standalone demo - to bring it into your main application, you end up having to integrate into most of the existing framework, and that influences the original demo code - often for the better, but that depends on the quality of the existing code base - and how well it was architected (by the code equivalent of the execs). Very few companies do acquisitions where they carefully protect the acquired company. The assumption is that the buying companies culture is better! One company that does do this quite well is Conde Naste. (Wired, Reddit, etc. all have quite separate identities, and from the outside appear to have autonomy.) When you start to see an exodus of long term Yahoo! execs, then she's probably doing something right. Whether Wall Street would reward her for that, is a totally different question!!!
- Tyrannosaurs 13y ago
  This. Culture is pushed from the top. If you're changing the culture at the top then bringing new people in lower down might speed up the change and solidify it but in of itself it won't change anything if nothing is changing at the top.
  - Swannie 13y ago
    Right, but if you bring them in without changing the top, they either get changed to the existing culture are and somewhat unhappy. Dislike the new culture and leave. Or kick up a fuss, and get asked to leave. But if they see execs who really get it, they may endure a line or middle manager who doesn't get it, knowing that it's just a matter of time.

by pavs 13y ago

badclient 13y ago

I think the strategy is to get as many new decent developers outside the yahoo echo chambers, in an effort to change the working culture inside the company. Unless I'm wrong, qwiki had 9 employees. To pay ~$5M/developer seems incredibly expensive. Yahoo could simply offer $500,000/yr and I'd reckon they'd attract talent at same caliber or better than qwiki. In that sense, this seems like a disastrous acquisition if purely for talent.

pavs 13y ago
I am not going to pretent to know how hiring process on big companies like yahoo/google works but here are some of the reasons I think for a company in Yahoo's position acqui-hire is the best way to go: - In general, top developer are more likely to work for more interesting companies with interesting problems to solve with good pay to boot. I think most good developer would rather work for Google or their own company than work for Yahoo. Since mooching top developers from Google is out of the question, acqui-hiring seems to be the next best option. - You can't play with 500k/yr strategy because they are other top companies with deeper pocket and can throw more money at employees than yahoo, also because it creates a bad precedent, where current employees who might be more talented but getting 1/5th of the pay. It also artificially increases values of developers IMO. - Getting acqui-hired employees from small companies/start-ups means hiring people who used to working under pressure and delivering/shipping. This might not always be the case for Yahoo current group of people. People from outside the eco-chamber might help them change the working culture. - They had to pay that amount, doesn't mean thats how much they value they employees, it also means thats how much they had to pay the investors in order to get employees to work for them.
- badclient 13y ago
  - You can't play with 500k/yr strategy because they are other top companies with deeper pocket and can throw more money at employees than yahoo Those same top companies can throw more money at start ups as well. They don't because they don't think they are worth that much or much at all. also because it creates a bad precent, where current employees who might be more talented but getting 1/5th of the pay. It also artificially increases values of developers IMO. Nothing creates worse precedence than being a yahoo employee of few years and finding out the new guy in the next cubicle became a millionaire because he came via a start up that didn't go anywhere. THAT's demoralizing as it gets and tells existing yahoo employees that if you want to make millions, you should leave yahoo because that's what the guy next door did.
  - pavs 13y ago
    I think you are very misinformed. - because Google and other big companies do pay crazy amount for acqui-hires, more often and more consistently than yahoo does: http://www.siliconbeat.com/2013/03/28/silicon-valleys-biggest-acqui-hire-er/ http://www.siliconbeat.com/2013/03/28/silicon-valleys-bigges... The reason Yahoo is more talked about because of Mayer and she is trying to pick up a sinking ship. A valiant u-turn of a dying silicon giant by an ex-googler story is more interesting than Google/MS/Facebook/Twitter acquiring to keep their strong position. - Being successful in startup takes a special kind of talent (with lotsa luck), if every joe/moe could do it, they would. Nothing is stopping any yahoo developer to leave their safe job and take on this challenge, but chances are they won't and most people don't.
    - badclient 13y ago
      1. You've proven my own point true: that even after competition from others, yahoo can still continue buying companies. Similarly, I'd argue yahoo can hire great employees for lots of money(but less than aqui hire) even if google etc decide to compete with them in matching salaries. 2. Start ups are hard. But when so many joe schmoe start ups that have created so little value get acquired for 50M, all of a sudden it lowers the barrier for start up success and makes more people want to do it.

zimpenfish 13y ago

They're not going to change the working culture by hiring "smart" people - that was one of the problems in the first place... (That and the byzantinely fractal multi-layered management structure.)

pavs 13y ago
I agree with you that only hiring smart people is not going to fix any problem. But thats not the only thing thats happening. After reading dozens of Quora discussions on Yahoo over the last few months, I am getting the impressions from current employees (and former employees who are in touch base with their former colleges) is that there are also very big changes on how these smart people are being managed. I remember reading about: - "All hands on deck weekly meetings." - More emphasis on what the employees want and need to perform better and taking care of those solutions. - Open door policy, if anyone needs to talk to higher ups. We don't know other details, but I am guessing these are positive changes.
- Swannie 13y ago
  Nice... references would be much, much appreciated!
  - pavs 13y ago
    Its a lot of reading, but I would start with this two: http://www.quora.com/Yahoo/Is-it-true-that-Yahoo-is-better-to-work-for-now-June-2013 http://www.quora.com/Yahoo/Is-it-true-that-Yahoo-is-better-t... http://www.quora.com/Yahoo/Why-do-people-still-work-at-Yahoo http://www.quora.com/Yahoo/Why-do-people-still-work-at-Yahoo You can also check out related questions and their search on yahoo related recent question, lots of activity by current/former yahoo employees, both anonymous and on record.

Swannie 13y ago

Culture is set by the execs, and their senior managers, not the developers. Buying up new companies won't change the culture unless they are integrated into a new management structure. Sure, a good junior or mid-level manager can maintain a strong culture in their team/organization. BUT only with senior exec support - otherwise they will fall under corporate oversight for everything - from facilities policies (free snacks, beer, soft drinks, breakfasts? huge desks? breakout rooms?), HR processes (hiring, performance, salary increases, role changes), IT processes (hardware/software freedom), etc. There are talented managers who can present a view of full cooperation, but still do their own things - though again, to pull that off, they usually have some senior exec support. The more contact with the rest of the org. the more its culture seeps in. Just think about it in terms of code - you write some code as a standalone demo - to bring it into your main application, you end up having to integrate into most of the existing framework, and that influences the original demo code - often for the better, but that depends on the quality of the existing code base - and how well it was architected (by the code equivalent of the execs). Very few companies do acquisitions where they carefully protect the acquired company. The assumption is that the buying companies culture is better! One company that does do this quite well is Conde Naste. (Wired, Reddit, etc. all have quite separate identities, and from the outside appear to have autonomy.) When you start to see an exodus of long term Yahoo! execs, then she's probably doing something right. Whether Wall Street would reward her for that, is a totally different question!!!

Tyrannosaurs 13y ago
This. Culture is pushed from the top. If you're changing the culture at the top then bringing new people in lower down might speed up the change and solidify it but in of itself it won't change anything if nothing is changing at the top.
- Swannie 13y ago
  Right, but if you bring them in without changing the top, they either get changed to the existing culture are and somewhat unhappy. Dislike the new culture and leave. Or kick up a fuss, and get asked to leave. But if they see execs who really get it, they may endure a line or middle manager who doesn't get it, knowing that it's just a matter of time.