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.'"

Scary

[Anonymous Coward]

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

[nudicle]

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.

Shakeup?

[JimDaGeek]

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.

Hedgehogs.....

[ezratrumpet]

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.

Re:Shakeup?

[cetialphav]

But that 15-20% are not carrying their weight. The VP's view is that they are not productive. Now I don't work at Yahoo so I don't know if he is right or not. But if he is right, then why is it fair to let 15-20% of the company drain the profits of the company? Why would the workers have more rights over the shareholders, who have invested cold hard cash?

I don't think the people that get let go will have big problems finding other jobs. Tons of companies would love to be in Yahoo's position and would like to get a piece of Yahoo's employees. If the workers can't convince someone to give them a job, then you really have to wonder what kind of value they really produced at Yahoo.

Some companies just have too many people for what they do. I would love to see headcount reduced by 15-20% where I work. I'm convinced it wouldn't hurt us a bit. The headcount grows so we can put more resources on projects to finish them sooner. The problem is that the projects are still hopelessly late. Only now we have to deal with more layers of the organization. We would be better off with a smaller, highly skilled core. It sounds like this is what is happening at Yahoo.

Re:what a poorly managed metaphor; dude is a clown

[failedlogic]

I think what's worse, is that he was the one who was helping to spread the peanut butter for the last 3 years as a VP. Why is he writing this memo now and not two years or one year ago? A letter in the WSJ was critical of Yahoo's performance. That's not fair or being accountable. He contradicts his own goddamned logic. Its his fault as much as anybody else's for not catching this problem years ago. Or months before the WSJ article.

And rather than fire staff, why not reallocate them to positions where there might be further growth or opportunities. I know, as well, that some underperform (and they usually don't get canned) and executives need bonuses in time for Christmas. Damn cynics!

Danger: PHB at work

[the eric conspiracy]

'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

[Anonymous Coward]

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!

Re:Having worked at Yahoo... eBay too

[Anonymous Coward]

Carbon copy for eBay.

Get rid of the top execs, gut 80% of middle management. Too many people doing nothing and being safe in their jobs. A good project comes around and everyone trys to get their hands on it to be able to later claim that they were a part of it. The end result is extremely long project timelines and watered-down projects (destroyed by too many cooks, then crippled by people who are threatened by the project's potential success).

Classic "Leadership" by Blaming Others

[mpapet]

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.

Re:Shakeup?

[I_am_the_man]

How is the parent post Insightful?

"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."

How do you know they got a bonus? What companies were these ? You sound like someone who is bitter and has no proof of what you alledge happened to you no less what someone in another company is planning to do. Trust me this guy is not scheming for a bonus by putting his butt on the line writing this memo. That makes little to no sense except among the most cynical and bitter.

Mike

Re:Shakeup?

[An Onerous Coward]

Putting his butt on the line? No, putting your butt on the line would be saying, "15-20% of our employees aren't doing anything productive right now. But we're a clever company in a big field, so let's find something truly useful for them to do." The whole "lay off waves of employees and refocus on core competencies" thing is something every MBA learns in Driving Up Stock Prices 101. It's been shown pretty ineffective at improving companies' long term success prospects, but in investors minds, ruthless to employees == good for profits, so the practice continues.