Mayer Declares That It's Peanut Butter Jelly Time at Yahoo | Hacker News Reader

Mayer Declares That It's Peanut Butter Jelly Time at Yahoo

allthingsd.com

49 pointsashishbharthi42 comments

One element of the memo I was happy to see, was the dogfooding of Yahoo! Mail/Calendar, as in, people at Yahoo! will start using it rather than Microsoft Exchange. Sometimes I think powerful personalities at Yahoo! IT, with a bit too much money and people working for them, have caused a not insignificant amount of the downfall at Yahoo! by treating the company like it was a financial firm, or the Department of Defense, instead of a digital media destination. The Blackberry was an awesome communication devices from 1999-2005, but, 2008/2009+ (and certainly not 2012) is not the appropriate smartphone for a company that wants to be using the same system as their "digital media savvy" customers.

Those two steps will tell me if Mayer, a supposedly "technology" focussed CEO will be able to go head-head with Yahoo! IT. (It should say something that I even have to suggest the CEO of the company needs to go "head-head" with the IT organization)

When at Yahoo, I had multiple flame wars with the exec in charge of the Blackberries decision. I was told in no uncertain terms how it was the only option due to security/other concerns and this person just didn't care much about the loss in productivity. Happy to see Marissa sorted that out in her first month.

Blackberries were the only reasonable choice at some point in the past. It's not reasonable to compare blackberries vs. other phones in 2006 or 2008 vs. 2011 or 2012.

Not only where they the only reasonable choice - they were the perfect choice - I can recall our entire executive team living on their blackberries non-stop. Before Push-Email, unlimited SMS (and IP based alternatives, like WhatsApp), and Enterprise IM became so predominant, blackberries were the best way of staying in 24x7 contact with everyone else.

I'll even make the argument that the Blackberry might have been the better choice in 2007/2008, and, just possibly, sneaking into 2009. The iPhone lacked reasonable exchange support for it's first iteration, push email wasn't there, and the Mobile Data Management (MDM) policies and security were slim to none.

But any company that was agile, and technologically savvy, and particularly those that were focussed on consumer digital strategies, started shifting over to the popular smartphones (IOS first, Android Second) by 2011 at the very latest. Yahoo! IT's love of the blackberry has held that company back. If every one of their engineers, and executives lived on an Android/iPhone, their mobile strategy would be seeing a lot more love.

The Department of Defense might make an argument for using blackberries. Yahoo! can't.

No excuse to not switch when 2010 rolled around, especially when mobile became one of Yahoo's top priorities.

Yeah, I think the transition point was 2009-2010 with the 3GS and commercial MDMs. Deploying iPhone/Android today without an MDM is actually still worse in a corp environment than using blackberry+BES, and when the first iphones and androids came out, there was no MDM available.

I don't remember 2008-2009 all that well, but I think Airwatch was 2009, and there was some weak Zenprise support in late 2008.

> Sometimes I think powerful personalities at Yahoo! IT, with a bit too much money and people working for them, have caused a not insignificant amount of the downfall at Yahoo! by treating the company like it was a financial firm, or the Department of Defense, instead of a digital media destination

I've seen much the same thing happen at a company I worked at in the early late 1990's and early 2000's. The CIO had a heroic moment years ago and used the political capital to run IT as he saw fit, catering to the email/web needs on the sales/business side, but demonizing engineers who had more stringent needs. (Even to the point of a crony calling the complaining engineers "terrorists" in a public speech shortly after 9-11.)

Wondered why they were calling her "Sweet Mayer". The title was "Sweet! Mayer... "

The missing exclamation mark makes quite a difference.

And in the title tag the exclamation point is replaced with a question mark.

Honestly one of the more impenetrable articles I've read lately. Just not very clear or well written. I'm not even entirely sure there is anything news worthy here. Just some dire need on Swisher's part to make a connection between PB and J and the famous peanut butter memo. That's not enough to justify an article.

It's like the article-writing style at The Onion: the (amazing) headline comes first, and the actual content, if any, comes after.

And then in the first line they refer to it as the Peanut memo. That doesn't even work as an analogy.

But... they took turnstiles out!

Asking people for their thoughts is a great way to get only as much real feedback as people think they're allowed to say without being at risk for losing their jobs.

A real question would be "What do you have to do against company policy in order to get your job done?"

> A real question would be "What do you have to do against company policy in order to get your job done?"

Now that's a real good question.

Meta: Is it just me, or is tech journalism becoming exponentially more vapid every day?

Not just you.

Seems like a lot of rearranging the deck chairs. Hopefully the real work of significantly restructuring the company is happening behind the scenes where allthingsd can't see.

Part of the restructuring this particular business is convincing your talent that they are no longer working for patronizing bean-counting tightwads.

The key to fixing Yahoo is changing Yahoo's culture. That's exactly what she's doing, one step at a time. Why not start with some low-hanging bureaucratic fruit? These are the kinds of issues that drive top performers nuts.

Can someone explain the parking barrier and turnstile changes for me in more detail? I don't get it.

Based on the way the article is phrased, it sounds like removing these makes things feel simpler and less bureaucratic.

In more details: not having a parking barrier means you can just drive in the lot without stopping your car, opening your window, scanning your badge, putting your badge away, starting your car again just to stop just after in a spot. I don't know where Yahoo! HQs are but I'm guessing they are little use to check who is parking on their lot. So what does that change for employees? It removes one useless step in your morning routine.

Turnstiles are similar. Turnstiles are a bit uncomfortable and unnatural. If you can remove them, it just simpler. I doubt they just let anyone in, but you can put a couple of security people, a badge scanner and you're good to go. I know Facebook has something where you just badge and walks through without having to push a hard metal bar with your leg, hoping it won't catch your gym bag.

I'm skipping the steps because you stopped too far from the scanner

The parking barriers were pretty silly in the first place because they were only on some of the lots. If you wanted to park by buildings A,B,C or D you would scan your badge on a card reader and they would open, but if you parked across the street by building E there was no such barrier. And it wasn't like they stopped people from walking across the street and right to the other buildings.

"turning off the turnstiles in building D". Building D traditionally has held the HR Department. I may be reading in too much but I think she's put a halt to the practice of firing a full-time employee and then hiring them back as a contractor or FTE again with a higher salary. As for the parking barriers, I'd just be guessing. It could be unlocking gates or it could be removing assigned spaces.

I seem to recall literal turnstiles.

Maybe I'm becoming cynical, but reading memos like this makes me resent the cubicle world of Corporate America more and more. How about Hawaiian Shirt Friday? Can you change corporate culture by removing turnstiles and parking barriers?

Can you change corporate culture by removing turnstiles and parking barriers?

Try asking yourself the opposite question... "Can you change culture by adding turnstiles and parking barriers?"

Maybe it's just me, but I would answer "no" to the question phrased either way. Honestly, neither of those seems like a very big deal. I'm actually surprised people would even bother complaining about something like that.

Interesting. I expect most people would immediately see the "adding" scenario as a sign of a worsening culture. In my mind, if a company is becoming so bureaucratic as to need to add turnstiles and parking barriers, it would be a clear step on the path to a very toxic culture. It all has a very "big brother" feel to it.

I'd agree with you if the turnstiles and parking barriers were added solely to track employee movement.

I don't know if that was the case at Yahoo, though, and I'm willing to give them the benefit of the doubt that they were originally meant for something more useful, like making sure there were enough parking spaces open for Yahoo employees.

and I'm willing to give them the benefit of the doubt that they were originally meant for something more useful,

Aaah, there you go. See, I'm way to cynical for that. Too many years of actually working for (or with) stereotypical Initech[1] style companies.

[1]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Office_Space

Some of this reminds that small things can have large repercussions on morale. There is a passage in The Illuminatus Trilogy that describes an act of culture jamming where a sign reading "no smoking" is replaced by a sign that says "no spitting" in an upscale department store. The customers and employees begin the resent the management, after all why would the management assume they would spit on the floor of an upscale department store.

As a long long time user of Yahoo services like Mail, and Groups, I have a ton of ideas that I wish I could offer. But, alas I am not an employee, just an old fart coder dog and business owner. After 32+ years in the biz what could I possibly know?

Did Yahoo never internally adopt Yahoo Mail and Calendar? if so, that would be analogous to Google using Lotus Notes internally.

As far as I have read so far they use Exchange internally.

How did this not happen before? Was it not obvious to previous CEOs that this level of bureaucracy was a problem?

I've said it before and I'll say this again: Kara Swisher needs to openly admit she has a serious grudge against Yahoo.

Her ethics statement should give you a clear understanding of why she is not a neutral observer.

I've generally appreciated her writing, but I agree with you here. There's an emotional undercurrent.

I've heard this. What's the history / backstory?

It's on her ethics page on the site. She is married to a Google exec.

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