Yahoo! VP Calls For a Shakeup

prostoalex writes, "Yahoo!'s Senior VP Brad Garlinghouse sent out a company-wide memo calling for layoffs of 15-20% of Yahoo! staff and reversal of priorities to concentrate on major issues facing the company. (The Wall Street Journal posted a copy of the memo.) MarketWatch quotes Garlinghouse: 'I've heard our strategy described as spreading peanut butter across the myriad opportunities that continue to evolve in the online world. The result: a thin layer of investment spread across everything we do and thus we focus on nothing in particular. I hate peanut butter. We all should.'"

Do not support

Do not support Yahoo, in their war against peanut butter. This is exactly what Google is trying to prevent with their "Do No Evil" Clause.

Re:May I be the first

What has this guy got against peanut butter?

WARNING: THIS MEMO MAY CONTAIN NUTS.

I've never seen a memo that confusing..

... that didn't have any buzzwords in it. Let's hope just that it doesn't get Yahoo into a jam - otherwise that VP could be toast.

Google could be accused of the same thing

Both Yahoo and Google this year have introduced a mind-blowing number of new services that make it easy to accuse either of spreading themselves too thin. Remember when Google said they'd only offer search, not chat or finance pages or horoscopes? Right, now they've also added 30+ other products (luckily they've stayed away from horoscopes for now).

The difference between the two is that Google has at least devoted the resources to improving upon their key product (search), while Yahoo has a difficult time defining what their key product is. I'm sure Brad Garlinghouse (being the VP of Mail) of the memo would say it's Yahoo! Mail, but if you were to interview every VP you'd likely get a different answer.

As an example of their lack of focus, look at the homepage. One week it focuses on news stories, the next it focuses on some random $50,000 video contest. This may keep people entertained, but it also reflects the lack of consistency inherent in the organization (or shows the bread through the peanut butter as Brad might say).

Re:Google could be accused of the same thing

Yahoo finance seems to be the only product they have that is best in class (in my experience). It's probably the best ad supported place to go for info out there.

They've already been cutting staff

I know someone who works in the Yahoo London office and there they've already been cutting back on some major departments. Fortunately he managed to find another job in his notice period, but it looks like a large portion of people there were getting the push.

These things unfortunately happen in any big company eventually if they have got involved in too many different areas.

Scary

Its amazing to me that someone with such poor writing skills can make it to the VP level of a multibillion dollar company. I think its time to sell some YHOO.

what a poorly managed metaphor; dude is a clown

I've heard our strategy described as spreading peanut butter across the myriad opportunities that continue to evolve in the online world. The result: a thin layer of investment spread across everything we do and thus we focus on nothing in particular.

By the analogy he adopts, peanut butter is investment. What bothers him is the nature of the layer of peanut butter : it's too thin. So the problem is with the peanut butter allocation, not the peanut butter. And in fact, his favored projects should get more peanut butter given his chosen metaphor, since peanut butter == investment.

Which makes this, I hate peanut butter. We all should, a mind-blowingly asinine comment. This guy doesn't even understand his own analogy and maybe Yahoo! would be wise to re-allocate the investment it made in him. Sounds like he wouldn't mind that at all.

This is what happens when people make comments they think are snappy and incisive without actually thinking about what the hell they're saying.

Having worked at Yahoo...

..and having left pretty recently, I have to say this is right on the money. Too many VPs, senior VPs, and directors who just go to meetings all day and don't contribute anything except to get large bonuses (which the engineers rarely see). Properties which have large teams but haven't gotten any updates in years (Calendar, My Yahoo, just to name a couple), which were supposed to have released stuff months ago for "beta", but of course haven't. Stupid acquisitions (Bix, wtf??) instead of just concentrating on what they're good at (go back to the properties update), and duplication of efforts (Flickr, Photos, and last I heard, there were 3 different bookmarking technologies).

On top of all that, there's very little communication between properties so you see lots of duplication of effort, or something that'd be useful to one section of the company which nobody except the designers of that cool thing know about.

I enjoyed working at the company, but I agree it needs a major shakeup. Can the CEO for starters.

Pro-Peanut

I like peanut butter.

Shakeup?

Or Christmas bonus?

This sounds more like an exec trying to get a nice fat Christmas bonus for himeself by putting 15%+ of the workers out of work for the holiday season. I have worked for 3 fortune 500's and this is how they all do it. They layoff a nice chunk of workers and then give themselves a big fat bonus for doing it. Pretty sickening if you ask me.

Yup, I don't see anything new here. Yahoo! has always invested broadly and shallowly. This dude won't change anything. He just wants to get a fat Christmas bonus so he figured the only way to do that was to put a bunch of people out of work. Don't worry, he and his family will have a nice holiday season. As for the 15% - 20% that he fires? Well, that is where we come in by giving money to the Salvation Army to help out families like that.

Long live uncontrolled capitalism! Hey, it is only to "maximize profits" or to "increase share holder value" right? Those few hundred or thousand families, well, they don't count.

I will eat my shorts if this bum doesn't get some type of bonus for successfully executing this round of layoffs.

You know language has gone down the tubes when...

You know language has gone down the tubes when people use awkward metaphors to elaborate upon clear ones.

- RG>

("tubes" pun unintended)

Peanut Butter must be the new name

Peanut Butter must be the new name for what was known as "portal" in the dot-com era.

Hedgehogs.....

I'm reminded of the Hedgehog Concept from Good to Great.

"We've got to zero in on a few key priorities," Semel told the financial community after Yahoo released its third-quarter earnings.

While Semel's challenge is painfully radical and hints at cutbacks as something of a panacea, his memo has some important points.

Yahoo needs to follow Jim Collins's advice - find the intersection of their passion, the thing they could do better than anyone in the world, and their profit engine. Focus all of their energies on that spot. Dismiss "good things" to gain "great things."

It's not too late for Yahoo....yet.

Notice

He recommends that other departments and individuals should be kicked out as excessive, not himself 'The great visionary...'

Right.

Brad Garlinghouse should setup an example for other to follow.
He should lay himself off.

Same old same old ... Bye Bye Yahoo.

Yahoo had cutbacks last year at this time as well. The entire culture is bankrupt (from the veterans' point of view). Young people with fresh ideas and no discipline. Lower employment standards, lower benefits (if you're lucky enough to avoid contractor-dom), inferior products. The smart money sold their Yahoo stock LAST year. I'm trying to think of 1 service that is synonymous with Yahoo and I can't...but I have memorized a number of audio clips (commercials/IM). That's just what I've gotten from my friends who work there (check the blogs, you'll see the sentiments and realities). This spokeshole announcement is just delayed reaction to machinations set in motion long ago. For the few that care enough, plz post about what Yahoo's doing that's fantastic and new that's showing growth.

P.S.
This is not ANTI YAHOO FUD, but my personal conclusions from what I know. Take it with a grain of salt and an eye for how you can find out for yourself.

Danger: PHB at work

'I've heard our strategy described as spreading peanut butter across the myriad opportunities that continue to evolve in the online world. The result: a thin layer of investment spread across everything we do and thus we focus on nothing in particular. I hate peanut butter. We all should.'

This is so utterly bankrupt. HE IS THE MANAGEMENT, HE IS RESPONSIBLE FOR THE STRATEGY. Laying off 15-20% and not going after the problem - bad strategy, incompetance at the top. This sort of turmoil will only cause the talented people in Yahoo to bail out and find more rewarding opportunities.

The stock market is going to pummel Yahoo. It is one thing to drive costs down through keeping the number of employees down, it is another thing altogether to show signs that senior management has no fucking idea about what they are doing.

Too much focus causes fixation burn

Seriously, why can't a company that is making a ton of profit utilize their money to provide even more services to people?
What does this VP think Yahoo should fixate on? Does he really think Yahoo can be leaps and bounds beyond competition in one space? Does he have creative ideas for how this would happen? How long does he think one revenue stream can be milked for, staying focused in one market sector results in revenue stagnation and suddenly when a paradigm shifting competitor arrives you're screwed .. sole source of revenue .. gone. Imagine if IBM stayed "focused" on cash registers a century ago. What if iPods never got video capability ("tv shows and movies is spreading us too thin"). This VP lacks vision and I wouldnt trust then guy to do even the thing he's "focused" on properly. If you give a bully a magifying glass he goes out and burns ants, not something useful.

Whenever a company lays off people en masse, it's ALWAYS because of the myopic vision of the CEO and senior management (save natural disasters). See here are two common reasons why an IT person becomes unemployed.

1. The worker is unable to do the job. - This is the workers fault, or (much less likely but possible) the management's fault for placing the worker in a job they arent supposed to do

2. Competitors in same industry doing fine but CEO cant figure out how to utilize thousands of people who are skilled - This is CEO's fault, unless the workers are incompetent en masse .. which is still the CEO's fault for not realizing it

But don't cry for the CEO in #2 situation .. he's getting a bonus!

Business idiots

The problems with Yahoo is that it is now run by business idiots. They will follow the same road as AOL.

I see what's going on here.

Normal people drunk dial, VP's drunk memo.

When I saw the title of this memo....

..... I thought it was another mod for Grand Theft Auto.

So sad.

Well, there goes the crunchy peanut butter and peanut butter and jelly premixed divisions.

All Hail!

I, for one, welcome our peanut butter overlords.

"A much needed wake up call"

Why did he need the NYT to provide a wake-up call? He's a senior VP, he's been there for three years and, by his own cheerful admission, his company's strategy and organisational structure are screwed. Shoddy leadership, no accountability, no direction, massive redundancy, and a mass exodus of the valuable staff.

Who's fucking fault is that? What's he been doing for the last three years? Why has he allowed Yahoo!!! to get into its current state?

The implicit admission being that he is one of the people he describes as "phoning it in", I assume that he will be including himself in the 15-20% redundancy.

Yeah.

Let's hear it for peanut butter!

Man, it must such to be the journalist who wrote the article inspiring this memo. Responsible (indirectly) for 15-20% of all staff being layed off? Ouch.

Also: "At the risk of being redundant..": I'd guess you aren't the one risking redundancy here, Brad.

Layoffs are bad

When companies talk reengineering they mean layoffs, but it needn't be this way: They should focus on waste reduction, business process improvement, quality, and innovation. Reskill existing workers and change positions, do not show loyal people the door!

Obviously wants HIMSELF to be on top

This guy is a typical MBA cut throat loudmouth who thinks he should run yahoo.com:

http://www.ptc.org/events/ptc06/program/speakers/g arlinghouse.html [ptc.org]

He became president of dialpad.com from working at the venture capital company that funded dialpad, when dialpad was bought by yahoo.com they inherited this master of the obvious.

Notice he has virtually ZERO technology education, he is a diametrically opposite of Google.com management, yahoo's competitor (actually yahoo is google's bitch). Yet they continue to promote and stack the management with these same types. Shareholders should revolt.

I hate peanut butter..

its peanut butter jelly time!

Happen to disagree

I have found Yahoos services to be among the better ones on the internet, so I dont really see what he is talking about. The yahoo services I use work better than any other.

I can not forgive...

I for one can not forgive yahoo for killing the All-Seeing Eye. The fact that they picked up this property and then just let it die, has proven to me that Yahoo really cares nothing about there users.

Let the a** kissing begin!

Gonna be a lot of a** kissing around Yahoo in order for people to save their jobs and justify their paycheck..... :(

From and old Yahoo fanboy

I used to be a huge Yahoo fanboy until the last few years were I found the service wanting. Heres a list of reason of why I don't use Yahoo "at all" any more.

1. Chat service isn't 100% cross platform, I use Linux/Windows and OSX/BSD and the experience on each is different, it either works (even then it's rubbish) or partially works. The rooms are full of spammers and idiots and the voice chat service is horrible (and not cross platform).

2. Yahoo doesn't do anything well, its search engine is dyslexic and doesn't really integrate with anything else

3. Theres no "real" innovation just a "me too" logic to yahoo in the last few years.

4. Its service api (chat being a great example) are all dyslexic and closed source and for ever changing with little if any warning.Heeelloo knock knock open standards Yahoo, time to wake up from the 90's it wants it's code back

5. The mail service is just horrible, sheesh what monkey designed that UI.

6. The final nail in the coffin for me was when Yahoo put profits before social responsibility and handed over details of a pro democracy supporter in China so it can keep making a few bucks.

Classic "Leadership" by Blaming Others

This screed reeks of the Good Manager's First Priority: Blaming someone else. In this case it's the whole fscking organization.

I think it's reasonable to assume this guy's department has as many problems as the next department except he's doing the classic pre-emptive management tactic of shifting blame by calling out someone else.

They are your worst kind of manager. They stink up the whole organization as soon as they drop their first pre-emptive strike. Get out quick because they tend to drag everything down and stay around launching strike after strike on others and collect hefty bonuses at the end of the fiscal year.

What makes it so insidious is they get all of the people that want a better organization (change advocates) behind them because jackasses like this blindly fire salvo after salvo around the organization. The change advocates typically don't like the person in question but see any kind of change as "Better than it was." It turns the departments in the work environment into a fortress.

I can't imagine a job that would be worth staying in with nut jobs like this.

People are valuable

Don't these managers realize it's expensive as hell to fire someone? Typically a company has a significant amount of money invested in someone in the HR process, training and up-training, job acclamation, etc. It takes years and thousands to get teams of people working at such a state where they are productive and profitable. Not to mention the negative effects on morale a large lay off causes and the associated losses in skilled workers (either by will or forcefully) and productivity.

If the current structure of the organization is inefficient or not working, it is the CEO and senior management's responsibility to reorganize that structure, avoiding loss of workforce whenever possible. Just because someone's "job" is inefficient doesn't mean that person isn't and can't be taught a new job or an organizational system changed. Thats like saying we're getting rid of all this scrap steel because we'd rather pay more to bring in new stuff. That fact is, the same people you have in place can form the core of your "new" company.

You can tell this CEO clearly does not know what he is talking about and is clearly behind the curve with his peanut butter sandwich analogy, which is just nonsense. Its a real shame people like this get to these positions without having anything real to offer to those they manage in terms of wisdom or innovation.

Calling for change is good, but knowing how to institute it effictivly to do good for the company is what defines a good manager. That said, the first change Yahoo! should make should be this VP.

Brad Garlinghouse will defect to Myspace

Brad - the writer of this memo - was rumoured to leave Yahoo for Myspace. He's supposed to be a disgruntled man for a long time - and this memo could be one of those angy outbursts. Not that what he wrote is not right, but for sure there's more to it than just plain loyalty thing.

Read http://www.valleywag.com/tech/top/yahoos-brad-garl inghouse-will-defect-to-myspace-157314.php [valleywag.com] or Google on this guy.

I hate peanut butter. We all should.

Funny, that's exactly how I feel about Yahoo!.

Nothing more than a suit

From http://www.zoominfo.com/people/Garlinghouse_Brad_1 926763.aspx [zoominfo.com] :

Brad Garlinghouse joined Yahoo! in 2003 as vice president of communications products, responsible for strategy, management, development, and financial performance. Mr. Garlinghouse is an expert on the intersection of communications and the Internet. He previously served as CEO of Dialpad Communications, one of the world's largest providers of PC-based telecommunications services. Under his direction, the company's user base grew from just over 2 million to 14.5 million, and he successfully diversified revenue sources from advertising to premium services. Earlier in his career, he led venture capital investments in software, communications, and Internet-based businesses at @Ventures. He also has held product and marketing leadership positions at @Home Networks, TCI Internet Services, and SBC Communications. Mr. Garlinghouse received a Master's degree in Business Administration from Harvard University and a Bachelor's degree in Economics from the University of Kansas.

So he has no background in technology, he only knows it at a high level.

Which Company?

Is this Yahoo or AOL? Now I'm confused.

What would Batman Do?

Okay the subject is funny, but does WayneCorp focus on one product? Hardly.

Actually, try this experiment:

Take two pieces of toast
Spread peanut butter on one of them
Leave the other one plain
Drop a couple of nice new crisp dollar bills on both slices
pick them both up and turn them upside down
which one has money on it?

Google definitely offers a peanut-butter style (whatever that even means) technology strategy, and it seems to work. Actually, for a technology company, diversity is probably the best thing you can do. Technology is topsy-turvy. Your competitor can come out with a new widget that puts everything you've done for your entire company's history to ruin if all you do is make an inferior version of the widget. If you diversify, and your competitor comes out with a new widget, you'll still be around. You just have to keep some agility.

Sayonara yahoo!, it was fun while it lasted.

does Yahoo knows itself?

I know a lot of recent ex-Yahoos. My husband is a recent ex-Yahoo. I know several likely soon-to-be ex-Yahoos. you can read my opinion about this here: http://rvincoletto.multiply.com/journal/item/284 [multiply.com]

Wrong way Brad

In our postmodern touchy-feely sort of world everyone tries to condone each other in the name of perspective, but I can't do that now.

After 3 years tenure Brad Garlinghouse is calling for 15-20% layoffs for what reason? I read the memo and from what I can tell his goal is to have a streamlined company with clear vision that stands out in the market as #1. This is a fine goal to have, provided that it's realistic. (Anyone work in corporate America - hello?) Unfortunately, from what I can tell what he wants is to have bragging rights about how great it is to be #1. He basically accuses the employees of not trying hard enough when the problem is not with the employees, but leaders. It's not the bulk of employees who are supposed to have clear vision, make acquisitions, or claim 'ownership', but the leaders! This memo bleeds arrogance and condescendence directed at the employees when (I'll reiterate) the problem is a lack of leadership rather than a lack of willing workforce.

In short: Brad, don't take this out on your employees. Make it work with what you have, figure it out! If you lay off 20 percent of your company a good 5-20 percent will follow. The rest of the employees that you have will be proud or bitter - and then you will have a real problem.

Well, it's about time...

Lately I have been actively avoiding Yahoo, even though as recently as a year ago I was spending a lot of time in their portal.

The rewrite of the yahoo message boards is a fiasco. Never has something that was working so well been turned into something that is all but unusable. For example, the pages are slow to load and navigation is abysmal, a combination of problems that causes frustration - when the poor navigation causes you to land on the wrong page, it takes a long time to back out and find your way again.

Yahoo server software has to be the most unreliable of any of the major portals. The are far too many instances of sessions being dropped.

The TV listings have all sorts of quirks in the navigation. Unless I hit the links in just the right order, I wind up with some cryptic error URL. The section should be made to be less Web 2.0 and more stable. I've switched over to TitanTV.com now.

Yahoo customer service is THE WORST. It is impossible to talk with a human, even after exhausting much time trying to explain the situation to an uncaring autoreply robot.

Yes, yahoo has lost its way. It may be too far gone to get back on track.

More than just a shakeup

Wow! Most companies built on an aquarian model either quietly go out of business or, just as quietly, shift to a hierarchical model slowly, sloughing off one small piece of dead skin at a time.

Layoffs are clearly not the purpose of this exercise at Yahoo; they are an effect. Converting a web of informal relationships into a functional hierarchy of responsibilities and authorities eliminates a lot of redundancy. A lot of people will likely be laid off, not because they can't do the job, but because, among the five or six people currently doing the job, only one will be chosen.

I wonder how long it will take all the Yahoos to learn that good teamwork is putting everything you have into the quarterback's choice of play.

Bilbo to Gandalf

'Gandalf, I'm beginning to feel worn..stretched....like butter scraped over too much bread.'

Interesting timing...

Given that Susan Decker from Yahoo! just joined the board of Intel, another company going through a major restructuring - http://www.intel.com/pressroom/archive/releases/20 061116corp_a.htm [intel.com]

Whither Flickr?

I just hope they don't kill Flickr, shoehorn it into Yahoo! Photos, or lay off the original developers and replace them with someone who doesn't get the Flickr community or the concepts behind it. Flickr, with its social networking, its tags and groups and its refreshingly nonproprietary APIs and data feeds, is a lot more usable than anything developed in-house at Yahoo! It'd be a shame if it became just another Yahoo! service.

One minor casualty of Yahoo!'s ownership of Flickr has been geocoding usability. Flickr uses Yahoo!'s map system, which is a bit like Google Maps only without the coverage. Their UK maps are somewhat inadequate, with only major roads and no street names.

Maybe he's upset about budget allocations?

I wonder if this guy is upset because his particular subset of Yahoo! didn't get all of the budget that he thought they should? I hear the people that say Yahoo! should focus on something "great" - but you know what, a lot of people who say that really mean "do something that makes the stock price go up, so I can unload and make a killing rather than the profit I would currently make, which I feel is meager". Yahoo does a lot of things that are "good enough". Yes, they could use improvements, but on the other hand most of them "just work" and their target market is not the Slashdot crowd of technological bleeding-edge early adopters, but closer to Grandpa and Grandma who want to use "that Internet thing".. and for them, Yahoo works pretty well (so did AOL for that matter I guess). They also do some other things that may be of more long-term benefit to everyone, things like being a member of the Calendaring & Scheduling Consortium [calconnect.org], a group trying to help solve the calendar interoperability problems which still plague us all. That might not be of immediate benefit, but sometime in the relatively near future you'll be able to schedule time with someone no matter what calendar tool they user - and that will be a major deal.

I recently logged into Yahoo...

Yahoo is no different then the old multi-line monolithic BBSs that did everything for everybody. Look where those ended up...

I recently logged into Yahoo for the first time in years. All I wanted to do was get added to an email list! Instead of being able to submit my email address and walk away, I had to jump through hoops to figure out my old yahoo ID and password. What a pain in the ass!

A Better Mouse Trap

Maybe if Yahoo had a web design interface that worked then more people would use it. It has never been able to upload more than one file at a time and always adds in extraneous code that needs to be taken out using their miniscule form window. I could make similar complaints about their e-mail interface (although I like the spam filter). Design a mouse trap that actually works and the world wide web will beat a path to your door.

Re:peanut butter

Only natural peanut butter. Don't eat that processed partially-hydrogenated sugar-enriched peanut-flavored garbage also known as Jif, Skippy, Peter Pan or one of the many other faces of this great Satan.