Traffick.com Comments
That response is one of the saddest, most pathetic I've ever heard from a company. It worries me that they are rationalizing the whole thing so much.
I get a little ranty in my response to the response:
http://gotads.blogspot.com/2007/...blowing-
it.html
John, where I differ slightly is that I think you can read between the lines a bit. There is a core of technical competency mixed in with the mucho deadwood at a big ol' company like Yahoo, and also many new hires who just organically get technology. All of the above are desperately hoping to distance themselves from the jackasses (in their mind as well as ours) who loused things up: the Semels, Brauns, of the world. YSM has its own campus now, and I really don't think they appreciate having had their own individual reputations bound up with the stultifying bureaucracy there. Indeed, a few of them took the risk to try to cut through it (while many did not). Hence the allusion to "heroic." Notably, nowhere in this response did I see any kind of defense of Semel himself. I believe the good people are just biding their time hoping that he leaves, as the rest of the world thinks should happen. If he doesn't, and if things don't improve soon, I think the exodus is likely to pick up steam.
By "I think you can read between the lines", I actually meant, "maybe you should."
I think a lot of people have been willing to give Semel and the whole "Yahoo as a media company" so much space over the years because of its sheer size. SEM only got mainstream attention in the past 2 years, so now everyone realizes what many of us realized since 2002: Overture was a shambles.
What some of us formerly speculated about, has become more obvious: Semel, and others who shy away from technology, don't add value to a company like Yahoo. Platform and technology issues aren't trivial, obviously. Hands must be gotten dirty, even in the top jobs.
http://www.traffick.com/2004/12/...pany-
anyway.asp
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