An Open Letter to Carol Bartz, CEO Yahoo Inc. | Hacker News Reader

An Open Letter to Carol Bartz, CEO Yahoo Inc.

thomashawk.com

27 pointsadulau7 comments

Pretty common sense stuff, but as they say common sense is not so common, especially among CEOs.

As for underperforming CEOs getting high pay, from personal experience I can provide anotehr data point: Ed Zander who at one point was the highest paid in the US with ~$30M. He totally fked up Motorola (among other people). In fact, sadly, this seems to be the rule rather than the exception among CEOs.

It costs a lot of money to convince a CEO to come to a failing/faltering company.

EDIT: I'd just like to add that I think the letter itself is very well written and surprisingly heartfelt.

What we need now is fuckedcompany.com 2010-style !!

Whenever I read a letter like the one Bartz wrote, I'm curious who the intended audience was, a board, or the employees.

"Margins have expanded. Revenue growth has stabilized after a long period of decelerating trends. "

That was definitely not written for any of Yahoo's employees.

Stock market is the most efficient grader of all? Really? Algorithmic trading accounts for over 70% of US equity trading volume. If there ever was a time when you could grade a CEO based on the stock market performance, that time is long gone. Check your assumptions.

Informationless trading adds volume but is not thought to move prices. Check your assumptions.

Huh? Informationless trading is pretty much the exact opposite of algorithmic trading. It has nothing to with volume, it simply means that you are buying/selling not because you have information that leads you to believe the stock in question is about to go up/down but rather because you need cash, or it's an IPO, etc.

Algorithmic trading is nothing but informational - the whole purpose is to analyze information, detect a trend, and ride it. Add to that quote stuffing and other price manipulation techniques (emphasis mine). It think it's rather hard to make a case that the robots that make up the majority of trading volume have no effect on prices.

I don't know where you get your nebulous is thought not to move prices. Thought by whom? HFT firms and technology providers? Well, duh. They are making a killing in essentially passive income and they are about to get shut down by various regulatory bodies in US and Europe. What do you expect them to say? Of course their party line is, we have a zero net effect on prices, and a positive effect on liquidity.

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