There's more to the Cuban embargo than meets the eye. It is true that the Southern Florida Cuban exile community wields a disproportional amount of influence. Florida is almost equally divided between Democrats and Republicans, and is a big state in terms of electoral votes; so when a sizeable block like the Cuban exiles votes a certain way, it can tip the balance.
However, that is not the entire story. If we (US) were really that concerned about the lost property of the Cubans expelled by Castro, we would also look inward and ponder the fate of the British supporters kicked out in 1776; the KMT supporters kicked out by Mao; etc.
If we can trade with China, Russia, etc. then there's no reason we can't trade with Cuba. In fact, the opening of the borders with USSR is often listed as one of the key factors in bringing it down; so why not do the same with Cuba?
But it happens at that level. You can't seriously expect anyone to go through life mistake-free. Look at Google's mistakes, for instance. How much money have they thrown after Google Glass?
This article, while making good points, is written with a slant: to sell a book.
Broadly speaking, Marissa's big weakness is that she's a tad naive. She thinks too logically, and believes that if she has a system in place, it will be followed in spirit by logically-thinking people like herself. This may have worked in Google, because Google was heavily engineer-focused during its early years; but Yahoo is different: it's a (nearly) 20-year old company, with many people who are lifers. They have honed their skills at survival; and as one middle manager put it to me, "I've seen lots of CEOs; she'll also be gone, but I'll still be here". She can come up with the best laid plans; but the middle management will do what it thinks is in its best interest. And they look out for themselves, always.
One of the major reasons why she embarked on the acquihire spree was to do an end-run around these people. She knows that if she has to count on them, she won't get anything done.
This is also why she initiated the 'stack ranking' process. Her goal was noble: to weed out the underperformers. And yes, they did weed out a fair bit of deadwood. But the elephant in the room went untouched: the middle managers. There is no accountability for them! I've seen people join a manager's team and quit (or switch) within months; by any objective evaluation, he should have been fired a long time ago. And yet he survives, because he's been there a long time and knows how to play the game. I have also seen stellar performers quit because their manager was not willing to go to bat for them in the calibration meetings, so they always ended up with "achieves" (which is average, and forms the bulk (70%) of the ratings).
This article cherry picks mistakes; but who amongst us hasn't made a mistake? The HdC hiring was a big mistake, for sure. But once again: she was being naive, and thought he could deliver, when all he was doing was blowing smoke up her ass. She still can't get her mind wrapped around the smoke-and-mirrors that is sales, which is why Sales is still suffering. She needs a powerful, no-holds-barred Sales head, so she can go back to being a Product person.
People in HN can diss her all they want, but I was at a trade show, and half the outfits (startups) I talked to wanted to be bought out by Yahoo. Money talks; and right now she has gob loads of it that'll give her a lot of rope.
Yahoo's problem is (and always has been for quite a while) bad middle-management. (See my earlier posts; like Punxsatawney Phil, I come out only on occasion). These middle MF'ers have been running the company into the ground with their lack of vision, petty infighting and sheer idiocy. This has led to MM and her cohorts to basically not trust the lower half of the company.
So the rank-and-file are paying the price for MM's inability to weed out the rotten layer of middle managers.
Instead of cracking down on the WFH crowd, she should crack down on middle managers.
1. Get rid of any manager who has less than 8 direct reports
2. Anyone of the level 'director' or above must justify their positions (there has been severe rank inflation in Yahoo in the past)
3. Anyone who has been at Yahoo for more than 2 years and in a position of authority must be forced to analyze why their property declined over that period, and what they could have done to avoid it. There is too much of 'shoot and scoot' at Yahoo: managers jump on any hot item, botch it up and then move on
From what I can tell as an outsider: Loeb thinks the company is valued at $18 - $20 range or possibly higher (thanks to its Asian assets). If he can drive down the price, he can load up some more.
Once he gets a significant voice in the company (via more board members), he will force them to sell their Asian assets, quickly driving up the price to the desired range. Having loaded up at around $15 and assuming it hits $20, you're looking at a quick 33% ROI. That's what hedge funds do; they don't usually invest for the long haul.
After reading this rant, I'm starting to think that all software companies become like this after a while. Extrapolating, I'm guessing Google has 2-3 years to go before they are ruined...
The managers always survived layoffs; the engineers, not so much. Has that changed now? probably current Yahoos can tell, but I imagine there a bit busy right now to post on HN.
Yahoo has over 18,000 employees (and not 14,000). The extra 4,000+ are contractors. This is a scheme that the bureaucrats at Yahoo figured out pretty early: announce layoffs, and then bring the employees back as contractors. "win-win for everyone", they joke.
I really, really hate to see people get laid off; But this was a long time coming. As an ex-Yahoo, I hope they cut out the thick layer of bureacracy thats sucking the oxygen out of that place. Ever seen the algae that suffocates a pond? The middle managers there are like that algae. And then there the VPs: at last count Yahoo had over 200 VPs. Really, What do these fuckers do!?
If Yahoo can become more engineering-centric, it has a chance. If the middle managers (and VPs) win out, stick a fork in it; theres no hope.
You hit the nail on the head. Mediocre, petty middle managers are the algae that are sucking the oxygen out of Yahoo.
I may get jeered for saying this, but a non-trivial amount of it was a result of Jerry. He kept his buddies around in high places for too long, and the rot set in. There were VPs in Yahoo who contributed absolutely nothing (and probably are still around, but I left). But they were always blocking progress just to stroke their own egos. Once you have nepotism and incompetence at the top, it just flows down naturally and the next thing you know there is widespread politics and infighting between teams. It becomes a feedback loop; the good people leave, and are replaced with buddies of the current incompetents.
The way to fix this is to actually make the problem worse for a while, by segregating the groups into independent units. Then you fix each of these units, one at a time. Then you bring them back into the fold.
Can anyone there do it? I doubt it. Most of the decision makers are too busy playing politics.
Notice I said "many cultures". For example: in some Arab cultures, if you sit with your sole (of your foot) towards the other person, it is considered an insult. I remember Diane Sawyer(?) of ABC going to interview Saddam Hussein; she sat with her sole towards him and he walked out. Of course, she didn't know; but these things happen.
Before you read too much into a statement (I will once again point out the "many cultures" part), please read what's written. I know, every one's on a hair trigger to jump on the slightest perceived slight on the Internet; but take a chill pill, man.
Carol Bartz and Jack Ma did not get along at all. She chewed him out in front of his underlings in Sunnyvale when they first met; and he never forgave her for that. Getting insulted in front of your underlings is a huge deal in many cultures.
If Bartz was still the CEO, she would have torpedoed any possible deal like this. So she had to go. The Board fired her to pave the way for Ma to put together a deal.
Ma says he'll be spending the next year in the US, "studying the market". Why the heck would he be wasting time here, when he already has a huge company to run in China, if he didn't intend on making a massive acquisition?
The next few months should be "interesting", if you're a Yahoo.
A year or so ago, there was a survey done (we had such surveys every quarter) which asked the employees how much confidence they had in the top-level management.
The answer? Only 11% said they had confidence.
This is what our manager told us. She was so disgusted she didn't even share the summary that she was supposed to.
After that, they stopped the surveys. It's easier to kill the messenger, I guess.
I apologize if it appeared that I was hating on Bangalore (or Beijing). I was not. What I am against is outsourcing based on the simplistic math that you can get "3 for the price of 1" in Bangalore. When we give Bangaloreans(?) work based simply on price and not on their core competencies (and how the outsourced team will work with the rest of the company), then outsourcing won't work.
I feel that outsourcing should be done where it makes most sense. For example: if there's any work that needs to be done for the Indian (or South Asian) market, then by all means it makes sense to do it in Bangalore! Or if we have a team of engineers in Bangalore that are rockstars in Android development, then give them Android work!
Basically: outsource work to Bangalore if you know that it's the best place to do the work; not just because they're cheaper! I feel that Yahoo has been doing the latter.
Yahoo's biggest problem is the creamy middle layer of managers. They are usually lifers (as in, been at Yahoo for a decade), or fresh MBAs with a Stanford degree who think that just because they sat through Management-101, they know how products should be designed.
This middle layer is like a Turkish harem. They're busy backstabbing each other, politicking and fucking things up. BUT NO ONE HOLDS THEM ACCOUNTABLE! Some dick will screw up a project, and then when the team gets laid off, happily move to another one to fuck that up too. Too often I've seen engineers just get disgusted and leave; or they'll go into a depressive "I don't care" mode. Passive-aggressive behavior is the norm.
Blake, when he joined, said that "we say 'no' to nothing, and 'no' to everything". What he meant was: in a meeting, the manager will say 'yes' to everything; but the moment he steps outside, he'll think "I'm not gonna do that!".
Innovation is also hampered by these middle morons. Someone tries to do something innovative, and a middle cockroach will crawl out, whining that his 'team' is working on it, and they'll have something ready in (some future quarter). So you're told to back off. Then you wait. In the meantime, that middle manager will use this opportunity to ask for more reqs and expand his little fiefdom. Time will pass, and nothing will get done. And you'll be waiting, agonizing, watching competitors eat Yahoo's lunch as this middle manager fucks around.
And then there will be cycles of outsourcing to Bangalore and Beijing. Some middle beancounter decided that 3 engineers in India can be hired for 1 engineer in the US. (Never mind the quality of people; it's just the 3:1 ratio that matters). So now they're busy outsourcing to Bangalore. Even critical support tasks are outsourced to Bangalore. So what used to take a couple of back-and-forth emails and get fixed in an hour, now takes 3-4 days.
The list of Yahoo's problems are long; and C-level people are not high on that list. "Vision" is also not a problem for Yahoo, if they'd just let the engineers just do their fucking jobs!
Carol's biggest mistake was pissing Jack Ma off and losing Alipay. A person at that level should never, ever, make such a blunder; and she had to go.
However, that is not the entire story. If we (US) were really that concerned about the lost property of the Cubans expelled by Castro, we would also look inward and ponder the fate of the British supporters kicked out in 1776; the KMT supporters kicked out by Mao; etc.
If we can trade with China, Russia, etc. then there's no reason we can't trade with Cuba. In fact, the opening of the borders with USSR is often listed as one of the key factors in bringing it down; so why not do the same with Cuba?