One of the most visible signs of Yahoo's weakness was its strategy to hire big media stars...I'm aware that Yahoo News brings in a godly amount of pageviews to articles on its site...but that hasn't translated to giving a more noticeable platform for its media stars. Since Yahoo hired Katie Couric, who was once a huge star on network news, the most I've seen her name in the wild is in Reddit ads promoting her interviews. I can't think of any other popular news organization that has had to resort to Reddit ads to promote its stars.<p>And remember David Pogue of the New York Times? His opinion was always spread widely when he was at the NYT...I've literally never seen any thing that he's written tweeted in the wild since he's been at Yahoo (though once in awhile I'll check in to read his stuff, which is actually still quite good and better than the NYT's current tech columnist).<p>I know cultivating a media brand is different than building and maintaining your core engineering team...but the media push was one of the big initiatives from Mayer and it went pretty badly.
I'm curious: how bad is it to leave a new job soon after starting (because you realize the product isn't as great as what you thought it would be/too much competition in space)? When you are a high performer, you really don't want to waste everyone's time if you end up in this bad situation. What is the professional thing to do?<p>Asking because the article mentioned some people staying only for a few weeks. In a small startup, not seeing traction would be reasonable cause for departure since your paycheck directly depends on it. In a large company, things are not always interrelated in the short term. So there is more time to try out things. I guess the question is: how long should one try to make a new job work?
There was a pretty good long-form piece about Yahoo News in The Baffler a while back [1]. It was by Chris Lehmann, a former YN editor. Although one expects that there's going to be a certain amount of one-sidedness in an account by an employee that was let go, it makes a pretty compelling case that one of Yahoo's flagship properties was disastrously mismanaged. He's highly critical of Mayer: "When editorial knowledge is deployed to elevate advertising, it stops being either editorial, or knowledge; it’s hackery, sold out to the highest, or just the bare middling bidder. [...] Under Mayer’s leadership, the company has brought this ugly art form to sophisticated new heights — and in the process blown through all the basic rudiments of journalistic ethics." There's definitely some corroboration for that view point, BTW. [2]<p>And it wasn't just the way the firewall between editorial and advertising was dismantled by Mayer. He documents the atrocious working conditions, the extent to which the executives Mayer hired to manage YN had no idea what they were doing, YN's reliance on gimmicks to try to juice page views (which didn't even work), and the way the site's editorial mission seemed to shift from week to week. Lehmann tells a particularly hilarious story about a Yahoo exec trying to pitch a Crossfire-type blog where a rightwing blowhard and a leftwing blowhard would argue with each other. The exec really wants to hire Robert Novak, not realizing the guy had died two years ago.<p>Anyway, after reading this and then reading the OP...not surprising.<p>[1] <a href="http://thebaffler.com/salvos/purple-reign" rel="nofollow">http://thebaffler.com/salvos/purple-reign</a>
[2] <a href="http://deadspin.com/dan-gilbert-didnt-like-a-yahoo-blog-post-so-yahoo-dele-1685364080" rel="nofollow">http://deadspin.com/dan-gilbert-didnt-like-a-yahoo-blog-post...</a>
Maybe, just maybe, it has something to do with the whole "work in our offices or quit" memo sent to virtual employees a while back not paying the dividends she had hoped. Adding insult to injury, perhaps her build-out of a full private nursery in the executive suite staffed with her personal nannies while simultaneously requiring staff to stop working remotely, even part time, had a deleterious impact on morale and work-life balance for those who cannot afford a team of private caretakers for their own families while they commute potentially for several extra hours each day.<p>Perhaps we are just now starting to see the effects of potential internal management hypocrisy with all these departures, especially the ones that only lasted a brief time.<p>Of course, this may be speculation on my part, but I can't see how decisions like those would encourage people, especially high performers, to stay long term if this is indicative of Yahoo management philosophy.<p>Ref:<p><a href="http://gawker.com/5987043/yahoo-ceo-marissa-mayer-installed-a-nursery-in-her-office" rel="nofollow">http://gawker.com/5987043/yahoo-ceo-marissa-mayer-installed-...</a><p><a href="http://gawker.com/5986462/yahoo-ceo-marissa-mayer-no-more-working-from-home" rel="nofollow">http://gawker.com/5986462/yahoo-ceo-marissa-mayer-no-more-wo...</a>
"another worried about the ability of managers to stanch the flow of valued employees."<p><i>That</i> is the problem right there: shitty managers at Yahoo. I spent a few years there, and despite being in the industry for many years, I've yet to find a more dysfunctional setup. Managers have absolutely <i>zero</i> accountability at Yahoo. In any other place, if engineers start leaving a manager, it would be cause for concern; if too many do so, the manager is axed. But in Yahoo, shitty managers hang around, hopping from project to project, biding their time till they can find a new project to shit on.<p>And the tech stack?!? Don't even get me started.<p>Yahoo needs to cut out its management layers, and reduce the manager headcount by 75%. Only then will it start turning around.
What does Yahoo do?<p>Microsoft has Windows, Office and Xbox.<p>Amazon has massive web server and product distribution platforms.<p>Apple has OS X and iPhone.<p>Google has Android, search, ads, and an online office suite.<p>What does Yahoo do? I guess they have some long-time email users and a well-liked stock tracking platform?
Going back on my time-machine, I recall when she was first hired.<p>Silicon Valley was abuzz with excitement, thinking Yahoo would once again become a tech-juggernaut that it once was, competing with Facebook, Google, etc.<p>Truth be told, the previous CEOs geared up the company to be more like Buzzfeed than like Google, making Yahoo a media company.<p>Granted, Yahoo would never be in the same circles as the common tech-juggernauts, but this is the natural evolution of companies.<p>Monsanto once used to make poison, now they force their fake-seeds to feed the world.<p>Deep down, we all wanted Yahoo to go back to being something, afterall, it was a cool company once upon a long 1990s time ago, but Mayer was probably the worst hire of them all.<p>In the end, it doesn't matter though. She has a vested interest somewhere north of US200million and her failure at Yahoo will be celebrated when Twitter hires her as "Head of UX" once someone like Carl Icahn buys Yahoo shares to spinoff Alibaba faster and then spinoff: Yahoo Finance (Bloomberg), Flickr(Facebook), etc.
> Jon McCormack: At the end of last year, Mayer scored a coup in the hiring of the Amazon star to be in charge of all of Yahoo’s mobile engineers. He only stayed a few weeks.<p>Ouch.
Every body can sail a ship in good waters.<p>She has been a CEO of a publicly traded company for 3 years. One that was "seemingly" in trouble. 3 years is a long time for a company that was founded 3 years ago. Yahoo is 21 years old and still alive (and somewhat doing well).
This is what happens when you read a childrens book in front of all your employees <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/marissa-mayer-childrens-book-bobbie-had-a-nickel-2015-1" rel="nofollow">http://www.businessinsider.com/marissa-mayer-childrens-book-...</a>
Maybe Twitter/Yahoo should team up or Snapchat. Get these teens some ads. Yahoo's mobile strategy is a struggle, maybe some partnerships are in order.<p>I honestly believe Mayer could do it but since none of their apps are FB/Instagram/WhatsApp nor do they have the traction as these juggernauts, I'd suggest a partnership.<p>Come on Yahoo. Find a niche, make some money.<p>Losing these talented people. Maybe it's because they didn't perform or didn't realize the large task they they'd be responsible. Or maybe Mayer only hired them to steward a certain project (this wouldn't explain the quick exits but not all of these exits are quick). Mayer is a work horse. The issue might be with the hires and the difficulty of tasks.
I feel bad about such news. Ever since Marissa Mayer came they were starting to fix things with their services. Like for example Flickr was resurrected. If Marissa Mayer will leave, or if they narrow their focus, Flickr is probably not that profitable so it can stagnate again or be sold or killed. Which would be a shame.
Once Yahoo was willing to stop development of their own search engine and ad platform, I knew they were doomed.<p>Yahoo's ad service was a lot nicer than MSFT Ad Center and nearly as nice as AdWords. They gave up on one of the most strategic positions they had.<p>There is a pile of other stupidity there before and after that others could speak about, but with Yahoo making a deal with Google, it will only continue to be dumb.<p>I believe the entire culture, history, and everything at Yahoo is predisposed to failure and is beyond fixing. It's like a losing sports team who has a history and culture of losing. It takes an entire overturning of everything usually to fix it.
Is this one of those glass cliffs?<p><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glass_cliff" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glass_cliff</a>
This is really too bad for diversity.<p>>>Just last week, Yahoo lost two senior women execs — development head Jackie Reses to Square and marketing partnerships head Lisa Licht.<p>Before that, another exec once close to Mayer — CMO Kathy Savitt — left for a job at a Hollywood entertainment company, although sources said that was due in part to increased estrangement between her and Mayer.