Tech Nightmares: Ghostline the flux

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How many quarters after Q1 2016 till Marissa Mayer is unemployed?
	1 or fewer
	2
	4
	Her job is guaranteed; what are you even talking about?

Arsenic Lupin: Apr 12, 2012; This particularly rapid💨 unintelligible 😖patter💁 isn't generally heard🧏‍♂️, and if it is🤔, it doesn't matter💁.

shrike82 posted:

Not sure posting a simple history of YT says anything.
Hey, I'm not sure whether they'll succeed in selling content. All I'm saying is that they're not structured like the rest of Google like you suggested.

The reason I posted the link was to call out the number of times they've tried selling content with little-to-no success. They've had a video-renting service for 5 years; who uses YouTube instead of Netflix, Amazon, or the individual content-producing streaming services? In 2013 they launched YouTube Comedy Week, which was pretty much ignored and never had a followup. The last two CEOs installed at YouTube were long-term Google insiders; the current CEO, Susan Wojcicki, is the Google Ads and Marketing specialist who originally championed the Youtube buyout: she's a monetizer, not a creator. The previous CEO, Salar Kamangar, was employee #7 at Google and had been head of Google Apps before transferring; again, not a person with a history in media. The Youtube organization is not promoting CEOs from within, but instead hiring senior executives with a Google pedigree.

# ¿ Feb 11, 2016 20:50

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# ¿ May 22, 2024 06:00

Arsenic Lupin: Apr 12, 2012; This particularly rapid💨 unintelligible 😖patter💁 isn't generally heard🧏‍♂️, and if it is🤔, it doesn't matter💁.

Typo posted:

Children's entertainer on youtube, he plays video games while 8-14 year olds watch him

which is btw why everyone over 14 hates him

And, again, serious "watch me play games" work has moved to Twitch.tv when that could have been a Youtube success.

# ¿ Feb 11, 2016 21:06

Arsenic Lupin: Apr 12, 2012; This particularly rapid💨 unintelligible 😖patter💁 isn't generally heard🧏‍♂️, and if it is🤔, it doesn't matter💁.

In the dot-com era I very briefly (6 months) worked for an investment bank, on the infrastructure side. The actual movers and shakers were quite blunt about how little they cared what happened to a stock after they brought it public. Their job was to make $$$$ for the investment bank and coincidentally some of the founders at the IPO, to give the company a couple of Buy ratings, and then to cut the company loose. Some investors* buy invest pre-IPO and then dump most, if not all, of the shares at the IPO; they don't think the stock is a long-term win, they just want to make the quick profit.

* You have to be what used to be a "sophisticated investor", now a "qualified investor" to be allowed to invest at this stage. There are several different criteria, but two of them boil down to "having more than $1M net worth" and "having more than $200K yearly income".

# ¿ Feb 11, 2016 22:35

Arsenic Lupin: Apr 12, 2012; This particularly rapid💨 unintelligible 😖patter💁 isn't generally heard🧏‍♂️, and if it is🤔, it doesn't matter💁.

shrike82 posted:

it's a bit more complex than that (was on the buy side myself).
there's a fair bit of relationship management involved with institutional clients and the company being IPOed so it's not just IPO and forget.
i mean there's a reason why IPOs have been overwhelmingly underpriced

The people I was supporting were on the sell side, but at that time (again, dot-com era) somebody laughingly assured me that the "Chinese wall" was a theoretical construct nobody paid attention to, and that the buy-side analysts did the sell-side people's bidding. I didn't know much about it, and certainly the statement was from the sell side's biased viewpoint.

This is *so* not my field of expertise, though: see "infrastructure support" and the 6-month stay.

# ¿ Feb 11, 2016 23:06

Arsenic Lupin: Apr 12, 2012; This particularly rapid💨 unintelligible 😖patter💁 isn't generally heard🧏‍♂️, and if it is🤔, it doesn't matter💁.

Uber just paid $28M to settle a class-action lawsuit. (They probably found the money in the couch cushions.)

quote:

Uber has agreed to pay $28.5 million to settle a class-action lawsuit that took issue with the company�s claims that its driver background checks were �industry leading.�

The terms of the settlement, filed on Thursday in the United States District Court in the Northern District of California, require Uber to pay roughly 25 million riders across the United States and to reword the language around the fee that the company charges for each ride.

Uber will rename the fee, called the �safe ride fee,� to a �booking fee.� The ride-hailing company said it would use the fee to �cover safety as well as additional operational costs that could arise in the future.� Lyft, a main Uber rival, has made a similar change, Uber said.

�No means of transportation can ever be 100 percent safe. Accidents and incidents do happen,� Uber said in a statement. �That�s why it�s important to ensure that the language we use to describe safety at Uber is clear and precise.�
...
�We are glad to put these cases behind us and we will continue to invest in new technology and great customer services so that we can help improve safety in our cities,� Uber said.

Ayup.

# ¿ Feb 12, 2016 00:46

Arsenic Lupin: Apr 12, 2012; This particularly rapid💨 unintelligible 😖patter💁 isn't generally heard🧏‍♂️, and if it is🤔, it doesn't matter💁.

More bad news for unicorns:

In December AirBNB released report on NYC hosts being law-abiding ... after purging listings in November.

quote:

�The vast majority of our hosts are everyday people who have just one listing and share their space a few nights a month to help make ends meet,� [a company spokesman] wrote in an email Wednesday.

He continued, �Airbnb is an open people-to-people platform where listings come on and go off throughout the year.�

Data for the independent report was sourced from two separate sets, one collected by Murray Cox, the founder of Inside Airbnb, and the other by the technology writer Tom Slee, who recently wrote a book titled, �What�s Yours Is Mine: Against the Sharing Economy.� The data that informed the report is available for download.

Matt Mittenthal, a spokesman for New York�s attorney general, Eric T. Schneiderman, said, �If this analysis is accurate, it appears that Airbnb is again trying to downplay the number of illegal apartment listings on the site.�

�Airbnb continues to show a blatant disregard for New York laws designed to protect the rights of tenants and prevent the proliferation of illegal hotels,� he added.

State law bans apartment rentals of fewer than 30 days unless a permanent occupant is present, meaning that short-term, full apartment rentals are illegal. A host with multiple listings cannot be present in multiple locations at once.

Airbnb has a history of removing listings in bulk in New York. In 2014, it got rid of more than 2,000 listings in response to an affidavit filed by Mr. Schneiderman that said two-thirds of all apartments listed in the city were illegal.

Pandora is said to be in talks to sell itself. Whether this represents good or bad news depends on the price offered.

quote:

For Pandora, it would be a curious time to sell. Its shares are yielding a market value of $1.8 billion, down from more than $7 billion two years ago. The stock has fallen more than 60 percent since October.

Pandora has the largest number of users for music streaming, but the competition is encroaching. Spotify is said to be arming itself with another $500 million in capital, and Apple Music recently surpassed 10 million paying users. Pandora�s users peaked at 81.5 million at the end of 2014, declining to 78.1 million in the third quarter.

The company is spending heavily to attract more users, and its ability to make money from those users may be waning. In the third quarter, Pandora lowered its full-year financial guidance, expecting its adjusted earnings to be $51 million to $56 million, down from the $75 million to $85 million it projected in the quarter before.

Pandora is set to announce fourth-quarter and full-year earnings after the close of the market on Thursday. Analysts surveyed by Standard & Poor�s Capital IQ are expecting Pandora to post $1.2 billion in revenue for the year, an increase of 27 percent from 2014, the company�s slowest annual growth ever.

A panel of federal judges increased the royalty rate that companies like Pandora have to pay record companies. Internet radio services now have to pay 17 cents for every 100 times they play a song for listeners who do not pay for subscriptions, up from 14 cents.

and finally
naive editorial suggesting Twitter abandon hopes of growth and become a niche social-media company.

quote:

Perhaps there�s more promise in a future as an independent but private company; as a small and sustainable division of some larger tech or media conglomerate; or even as a venture that operates more like a nonprofit foundation. (it. mine)

Even if Twitter intends to remain a public corporation � because there does not seem to be much appetite, nor a very obvious mechanism, for investors to take it private � it�s time for Mr. Dorsey to reset expectations for what his company can become. Twitter should think of itself and portray itself to investors as more of a public utility than as a business that never stops growing, and that could ever hope to approach the market value of Facebook.
�Maybe Twitter is not meant to be the most popular band in the world,� said Anil Dash, a longtime user of Twitter and the chief executive of ThinkUp, a start-up that intends to improve how people use social networks. �Maybe it�s meant to be merely Pearl Jam and not U2, and maybe Twitter could find equilibrium as a company with an enterprise value of merely $5 billion.� (At the moment, the market values Twitter at about $10 billion.)

# ¿ Feb 12, 2016 17:38

Arsenic Lupin: Apr 12, 2012; This particularly rapid💨 unintelligible 😖patter💁 isn't generally heard🧏‍♂️, and if it is🤔, it doesn't matter💁.

redscare posted:

It's less about abandoning growth and more about abandoning attempts to be Facebook. Regardless, I think Google will end up buying it before too long for a bag of nickels.

The thing is, all of the investor expectations have been for Facebook-style growth and monetization. Settling into its own niche is a failure by the standards of the investors. Google buying Twitter might make sense, but Google has proven over and over to be bad at social media, and Twitter isn't popular enough that they'd get the YouTube deal of hands-off management.

# ¿ Feb 12, 2016 22:01

Arsenic Lupin: Apr 12, 2012; This particularly rapid💨 unintelligible 😖patter💁 isn't generally heard🧏‍♂️, and if it is🤔, it doesn't matter💁.

ToxicSlurpee posted:

To be honest that's kind of one thing that confuses me about some of the attitudes in software land. What's so wrong about having a little niche that you fill? Why does everything have to grow exponentially forever?

Because of the unicorn mindset. I once worked for a company whose CEO loudly announced, during dot-com, "I don't want to head up a $10M/year company!" Sure enough, within a couple of years it wasn't any more.

Arsenic Lupin fucked around with this message at 22:16 on Feb 12, 2016

# ¿ Feb 12, 2016 22:09

Arsenic Lupin: Apr 12, 2012; This particularly rapid💨 unintelligible 😖patter💁 isn't generally heard🧏‍♂️, and if it is🤔, it doesn't matter💁.

cheese posted:

I love going to the Palo Alto Ikea and watching people who are obviously tech engineers making six figures buying 150 dollar dressers that they are going to have to spend 2 hours putting together.

It was part of their pre-marriage counseling.

# ¿ Feb 17, 2016 06:04

Arsenic Lupin: Apr 12, 2012; This particularly rapid💨 unintelligible 😖patter💁 isn't generally heard🧏‍♂️, and if it is🤔, it doesn't matter💁.

Things look worse and worse at Zenefits.

Farhad Majoo at the New York Times posted:

In particular, Zenefits may be among the first of several cautionary tales to highlight a sobering lesson: For a start-up, growing too quickly can produce just as spectacular a failure as growing too slowly.

First, the back story: Zenefits is a three-year-old company that makes software for small businesses. In its short life span, it has been called both the most unsexy company in tech, and one of the most promising.
...
These grand promises were bolstered by Zenefits� early growth. Its annual recurring revenue � an accounting measure preferred by subscription-based software companies � reached $1 million by the end of 2013, the year Zenefits was founded. Recurring revenue hit $20 million by late 2014, and was projected to reach $100 million by late 2015.

The exponential growth was catnip to investors. The start-up raised $500 million last year at a $4 billion valuation, one of the largest financing rounds in a year of mega-fundings. At one point, Andreessen Horowitz, Silicon Valley�s pre-eminent venture firm, had invested more in Zenefits than in any other company. In total, Zenefits has raised about $581 million.
...
Insurance regulators in California and Washington State have been investigating the company. According to people with knowledge of the investigation, at the root of the California inquiry is software that Mr. Conrad created to let Zenefits� employees cheat on the state�s online broker license course. It was the discovery of this software that led to Mr. Conrad�s departure. The news of the investigation was first reported by BuzzFeed � also an Andreessen investment � which has been examining Zenefits� rise.
...
Yet the story is more complicated than the single instance of a founder�s misdeeds. Zenefits� recklessness seems to have been merely the worst symptom of a larger sickness that infected the company, according to investors, former employees and others who worked with the management team (and who all requested anonymity because no one in Silicon Valley wants to be seen as kicking a start-up when it�s down).

That sickness: Zenefits was a company consumed by impossible expectations. In return for fund-raising at a stratospheric value, Mr. Conrad promised the moon to investors.
...
Then, to reach the moon, he began to transform a tiny start-up into a mighty rocket ship � only to watch it careen out of control as it stretched to accomplish the impossible. Though many noticed trouble, neither Mr. Conrad, nor the board of directors, nor anyone else in management could afford to stop, take a breath and fix the problems. Growth was the only imperative.
...
The unyielding pressure to grow sapped Zenefits. The company opened two satellite offices in Arizona and went on a hiring spree.

Zenefits began hiring people who had little experience with software sales in a highly regulated industry. There were some days in which 100 people joined; overall head count grew to a reported 1,600 late last year from 15 at the end of 2013 .

Growth broke stuff. To increase revenue, the company moved beyond small businesses to customers with hundreds of employees � and the software struggled to keep up. Instead of pausing to fix bugs, Zenefits simply hired more employees to fill in where the software failed, including repurposing product managers for manual data entry.

Employee morale sank. Regulatory compliance suffered (in addition to the cheating software); Zenefits had a process for making sure that only licensed brokers spoke to clients about their benefits, but young and inexperienced managers did little to enforce it.

Mama, call the regulators, I feel sick. Here's more on the software that let employees cheat on the brokers' training course.

# ¿ Feb 18, 2016 02:26

Arsenic Lupin: Apr 12, 2012; This particularly rapid💨 unintelligible 😖patter💁 isn't generally heard🧏‍♂️, and if it is🤔, it doesn't matter💁.

Marissa Mayer closes down another of her signature Yahoo programs. Times headline: "Yahoo Closes Online Magazines, a Costly Experiment by Marissa Mayer".

quote:

Marissa Mayer, the embattled chief executive of Yahoo, is gutting one of her signature projects: A cluster of digital magazines devoted to topics like food, autos, real estate, travel and technology.

Yahoo notified dozens of writers and editors at the 15 publications on Wednesday that they were losing their jobs as part of the Internet company�s broader plan, announced last month, to cut 15 percent of its work force.

Some of the topics that the magazines had covered will be folded into Yahoo News. Yahoo will still produce some original content in areas like tech and fashion. But articles on topics like food and autos, whose publications lost all of their staff, will be republished from other websites.

�It�s kind of a blood bath over here,� said one employee who was laid off, who requested anonymity because talking to the media could jeopardize her severance package. �Only a handful of people are staying.�

Ms. Mayer bet heavily on the magazines as a key to reinventing Yahoo as a premium destination for readers and advertisers. She devoted significant engineering resources to adapt Tumblr, Yahoo�s blogging network, to host the magazines.

She also spent millions of dollars hiring celebrity talent like Bobbi Brown, founder of the cosmetics line that bears her name; Joe Zee, formerly the creative director of Elle; and David Pogue, a best-selling author of personal technology books and a former columnist for The New York Times.

Ms. Brown is leaving the company, but Mr. Zee and Mr. Pogue are staying, according to a Yahoo spokeswoman.

In a 2014 interview, Ms. Mayer laid out her vision for the magazines as a rich medium for storytelling and advertising.

�You can layer in video. You can change the content. You can bring in the social aspect. You can tell someone, �Oh, by the way, your friend also read this article and thought it was interesting,� � she said. �A magazine, all 10 million copies have to be the same. Digitally, you can personalize it. You can put different advertisements that are more meaningful to the users in each one.�

In reality, Yahoo�s personalization technology never reached that level of sophistication. The editors of the magazines were constantly fighting with the people who ran Yahoo�s home page to get prominent display for their work. The home page editors, relying on reader data and computer algorithms, preferred to run articles licensed by Yahoo from other sites because they drew more traffic.

Mayer made a couple of big bets. She's formally given up on this one. She's taken a major writedown on another big bet, Tumblr. Investors think the only value in Yahoo is their Alibaba holding. Why does she still have a job?

# ¿ Feb 18, 2016 21:10

Arsenic Lupin: Apr 12, 2012; This particularly rapid💨 unintelligible 😖patter💁 isn't generally heard🧏‍♂️, and if it is🤔, it doesn't matter💁.

Okay, this'll do till blatant comes along. San Francisco Chronicle on Zenefits

quote:

So how did Zenefits miss the mark so badly?

I recently spoke to an investor in Zenefits who has worked closely with founder Conrad and who declined to be identified because he is not familiar with the company�s daily operations. While the investor says that Zenefits may have crossed the line, he believes the problems have been blown out of proportion. The rules that govern the insurance industry, he said, are complex and confusing.

More importantly, the investor suggested, entrepreneurs like Conrad are supposed to break rules, noting that Uber and Airbnb had technically operated illegally in several cities before new regulations made them legitimate.

# ¿ Feb 19, 2016 18:18

Arsenic Lupin: Apr 12, 2012; This particularly rapid💨 unintelligible 😖patter💁 isn't generally heard🧏‍♂️, and if it is🤔, it doesn't matter💁.

Yup, Yahoo's for sale

quote:

Yahoo announced on Friday it has taken more steps to explore a potential sale, by setting up an independent committee to reach out and consider offers from potential buyers.

The Sunnyvale tech giant also said it is working with investment banks Goldman Sachs & Co. Inc., J.P. Morgan and PJT Partners and law firm Cravath, Swaine & Moore LLP.

�We have hired excellent advisors and are working closely and in alignment with management to pursue an effective process," said Maynard Webb, Yahoo's chairman of the board said in a statement.

The move comes as Yahoo is trying to pursue three different plans to turnaround its business. One involves reducing its operating expenses by focusing on fewer products, cutting staff and building revenue in areas like mobile. The other two plans focus on separating Yahoo from its investment stake in Chinese e-commerce firm Alibaba, by either spinning off or selling its core business.

"The Board is thoroughly committed to exploring strategic alternatives while simultaneously supporting management and the employees in their implementation of Yahoo's strategic plan. We believe that pursuing these complementary paths is in the best interests of our shareholders and will maximize value,� Webb said in a statement.

Hands up everybody who's betting on Plan 1.

# ¿ Feb 19, 2016 21:41

Arsenic Lupin: Apr 12, 2012; This particularly rapid💨 unintelligible 😖patter💁 isn't generally heard🧏‍♂️, and if it is🤔, it doesn't matter💁.

shrike82 posted:

That isn't gentrification. I don't see any displacement of poor people or poor people's needs especially given your premise that the roll-outs are taking place in existing high income areas.

Google Fiber was advertised as "the entire town gets high-speed Internet" and only if you read the fine print did it turn out that entire neighborhoods needed to subscribe. When the rich people in town switch ISPs, the poor people in town are stuck on copper and cable lines that the phone and cable companies have less incentive to maintain and improve. Saying "well, you don't need the speed now" is missing the point; there was a time when I didn't need the speed I've currently got, but then Netflix looked at the streaming market and suddenly I'm watching movies over the wires.

In response to a question upthread: Tumblr doesn't make money, and that's why Yahoo had to write off a hefty chunk of its value last fall. So far Yahoo has not found a successful way to monetize its existing population, and when you don't have screaming growth a promise of future profitability is not what the investors want. See also Twitter.

After Jaws, I have read, producers no longer wanted to produce middle-of-the-road movies; as the decades past, they devoted more and more of their money to blockbusters, which are all-or-nothing shots, or to obvious Oscar candidates, ditto ditto. The variety of movies in wide release has declined as a consequence.

Has anybody seen other unicorns that belong in this thread?

shrike82 posted:

The tech bubble's been largely financed by institutional investors and the major tech players.

And by all the mutual funds, and for that matter banks, which invested in tech players for the growth part of their portfolios.

# ¿ Feb 21, 2016 19:52

Arsenic Lupin: Apr 12, 2012; This particularly rapid💨 unintelligible 😖patter💁 isn't generally heard🧏‍♂️, and if it is🤔, it doesn't matter💁.

OhYeah posted:

Have you discussed Transferwise already? The company that is supposed to be worth a billion dollars but has yearly revenue numbers that simply doesn't match the supposed worth of the startup.

Tell us more, please!

# ¿ Feb 22, 2016 03:11

Arsenic Lupin: Apr 12, 2012; This particularly rapid💨 unintelligible 😖patter💁 isn't generally heard🧏‍♂️, and if it is🤔, it doesn't matter💁.

Absurd Alhazred posted:

I'm going to hazard a guess that a company dedicated to making international money transfers as seamless and cheap as possible by using what looks like a more automated version of hawala is going to be financed by organized crime. The money laundering potential is too big to be ignored. See also Bitcoin.

My son tells me that a major means of money laundering is buying Steam codes at full price (over the Internet, not from Steam), then selling them at a discount. Dirty money in, clean, traceable money out. His friends joke about funding the Russian mafia.

# ¿ Feb 22, 2016 03:31

Arsenic Lupin: Apr 12, 2012; This particularly rapid💨 unintelligible 😖patter💁 isn't generally heard🧏‍♂️, and if it is🤔, it doesn't matter💁.

Gail Wynand posted:

Offshoring hasn't been a thing for 10 years, turns out it doesn't work well for many projects. Where it does work, it's already happening.

At my husband's current startup, most of the contracted engineers are in Russia, and it's quite tricky setting up the once-a-day videoconferences.

# ¿ Feb 22, 2016 04:17

Arsenic Lupin: Apr 12, 2012; This particularly rapid💨 unintelligible 😖patter💁 isn't generally heard🧏‍♂️, and if it is🤔, it doesn't matter💁.

How to make your PR team cry from the Guardian

quote:

�We are horrified and heartbroken at the senseless violence in Kalamazoo, Michigan,� Joe Sullivan, Uber�s chief security officer, said in the statement. �We have reached out to the police to help with their investigation in any way that we can.�

Later on Monday, Sullivan said the rampage could not have been predicted: �Overall his rating was good. 4.73.�

Yahoo�s Decision to Explore a Sale Exposes a Weak Board (New York Times, paywall)

quote:

It�s hard to believe, but after all these years, the Yahoo board is still a contender for America�s worst corporate board.

The announcement last week that the board is officially exploring �strategic alternatives� � code for a sale � and hiring advisers is confirmation that it is still stumbling, refusing to take a stand as its chief executive, Marissa Mayer, flounders.

Yahoo�s decision is something of an about-face from only a few months ago. Then, the board had decided that a spinoff of Alibaba stock was too risky. The issue was tax � the I.R.S. had stopped approving these transactions � and although its law firm was willing to bless the transaction, the Yahoo board decided not to go forward.

Instead, the company said that �market perceptions� dictated that it do another transaction. The board would spin off Yahoo itself and, for good measure, said it would consider �alternatives.�
...
But only a few months later, the board has again shifted course, this time initiating a full-fledged process to sell the company. An independent committee of the board has been formed, and lawyers and three investment banks � Goldman Sachs, JPMorgan Chase and PJT Partners � have been hired. Even the hiring of three banks shows the bloat at Yahoo as it searches for someone to lead it somewhere.

The company says that this is only one option, but independent committees have a life of their own. The train has started and it will probably stop at a sale.

Moreover, it is nearly impossible to run a turnaround plan when you are actively exploring a sale and are contacting bidders. The board knows this, and so the talk of a sale being �only an alternative� is cheap.

It�s exactly what a weak board would do at this time � throw its hands up, despite the possible value of waiting.

# ¿ Feb 23, 2016 00:29

Arsenic Lupin: Apr 12, 2012; This particularly rapid💨 unintelligible 😖patter💁 isn't generally heard🧏‍♂️, and if it is🤔, it doesn't matter💁.

Drogue Chronicle posted:

In addition to overhead, the company is getting paid because their brand and sales force, not your amazing connections, was the main reason you got the job.

The company is also getting paid because major employers are no longer willing to contract with single people directly, because they're afraid of winding up with you suing for employment. This means that even if I can market myself alone, the company will insist on contracting with me through an agency. My experience, may not be universal.

# ¿ Feb 23, 2016 20:44

Arsenic Lupin: Apr 12, 2012; This particularly rapid💨 unintelligible 😖patter💁 isn't generally heard🧏‍♂️, and if it is🤔, it doesn't matter💁.

RuanGacho posted:

Some days I dream of tech worker guilds and then I laugh when I realize how many of them are libertarians

This. As I used to say, "If I never meet another 25-year-old Stanford-educated libertarian, it will be JUST FINE with me."

# ¿ Feb 24, 2016 16:50

Arsenic Lupin: Apr 12, 2012; This particularly rapid💨 unintelligible 😖patter💁 isn't generally heard🧏‍♂️, and if it is🤔, it doesn't matter💁.

illectro posted:

IN a similar vein the Downround tracker is trying to keep track of companies valuations that have dropped:
https://www.cbinsights.com/research-downround-tracker

Thank you for that link! Yes, I really miss fuckedcompany.com , at least until the comments got even crazier than usual for the Internet. (I think I remember racist stuff being thrown around, but whatever the details, it was vile enough that even somebody who reads newspaper comments ran away.)

# ¿ Feb 24, 2016 19:06

Arsenic Lupin: Apr 12, 2012; This particularly rapid💨 unintelligible 😖patter💁 isn't generally heard🧏‍♂️, and if it is🤔, it doesn't matter💁.

Marissa Mayer is looking for venture capital to take Yahoo private.

At this point, it's like reading coverage of an ugly divorce.

quote:

Embattled Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer may be exploring a deal to take the company private in order to stay at its helm, even as her board explores a sale of the struggling search giant to telecom companies.

Mayer�s friend, investment banker Frank Quattrone, has reached out to private equity firms on Mayer�s behalf to explore a potential deal for Yahoo�s core business, according to a person familar with the matter, who asked not to be named because he was not authorized to speak on the issue. The news was first reported by Fortune and the New York Post and later confirmed to the Chronicle.

Yahoo declined to comment. Last week, the company said it would set up a formal process to reach out and engage with potential buyers. A committee of independent board directors would evaluate such offers and make recommmendations to the board.

Mayer is not part of that committee and now seems to be trying to carve out her own path for Yahoo, by finding a deal that would allow her to remain CEO. Mayer has been embarking on a turnaround plan announced in February that would focus Yahoo on fewer products with a leaner staff.
...
Investment bank SunTrust Robinson Humphrey estimates that Yahoo�s core business, including its real estate, could fetch net proceeds of $6 billion to $8 billion from a strategic buyer, compared to $4 billion to $6 billion from a private equity firm.

# ¿ Feb 25, 2016 22:00

Arsenic Lupin: Apr 12, 2012; This particularly rapid💨 unintelligible 😖patter💁 isn't generally heard🧏‍♂️, and if it is🤔, it doesn't matter💁.

She got reorged out of power at Google and got an insane amount of non-refundable money from Yahoo, with a hefty golden parachute.

http://dealbook.nytimes.com/2012/07/27/adding-up-marissa-mayers-pay-at-yahoo/

computer parts posted:

No one's going to blame you if Yahoo goes bankrupt.

Nope, this is going to hang around her neck forever. She made very visible big bets that went bad; when you go from "sliding slowly down the drain" to "worthless except for shares in a company you don't control", people remember. See also the way Carly Fiorina hosed up at HP.

Arsenic Lupin fucked around with this message at 00:42 on Feb 26, 2016

# ¿ Feb 26, 2016 00:39

Arsenic Lupin: Apr 12, 2012; This particularly rapid💨 unintelligible 😖patter💁 isn't generally heard🧏‍♂️, and if it is🤔, it doesn't matter💁.

Barudak posted:

Edit: Firing employees based on the basis of a bell curve system is phenomenally stupid. When Scott Adams can make fun of you, and did so decades before this plan came into existence, you have severely hosed up.

Google does it. That's why Mayer thinks it's a good idea. Google stack ranks *every quarter*.

# ¿ Feb 26, 2016 06:39

Arsenic Lupin: Apr 12, 2012; This particularly rapid💨 unintelligible 😖patter💁 isn't generally heard🧏‍♂️, and if it is🤔, it doesn't matter💁.

Doc Hawkins posted:

Does Google let people work remotely? Wasn't shutting that down one of Mayer's bets?

IIRC you can take WAH days, but you can't be hired as a telecommuter. "The refrigerator repairman is coming", yes; "I don't want to live in Palo Alto", no.

# ¿ Feb 26, 2016 16:20

Arsenic Lupin: Apr 12, 2012; This particularly rapid💨 unintelligible 😖patter💁 isn't generally heard🧏‍♂️, and if it is🤔, it doesn't matter💁.

Munkeymon posted:

I thought they were already worth more on paper than in stock when she was brought on, no? Granted, her buying a bunch of garbage for too much money just made that worse, but still, she just failed to stop the inevitable rather than taking an OK company and loving it over.

If I recall correctly, she didn't get options, she got actual stock. Even with the stock falling, that's still millions, and the golden parachute is in money, not stock.

# ¿ Feb 26, 2016 19:13

Arsenic Lupin: Apr 12, 2012; This particularly rapid💨 unintelligible 😖patter💁 isn't generally heard🧏‍♂️, and if it is🤔, it doesn't matter💁.

At Google, when I was there, it was a point of pride that engineers could push experiments to the production systems. I have no idea if this is still in effect. In general, there was wide visibility into the production systems, and employees were expected to be aware of the resources their systems were consuming and adapt accordingly. That's all engineering employees, not just the sysadmins.

I had a personal phone, and IT paid no attention to it at all other than requiring me to password it, and to use it for two-factor authentication with my laptop and with internal systems. There would have been severe and immediate consequences if I'd deliberately leaked anything to the outside world. Overall, the assumption (which, again, may have changed by now; I'm gone 5 years) was that I was a responsible and technically-sophisticated adult and would treat the company's best interests as my own.

Judging by the "move fast, break things" attitude of Facebook, something similar must be in place with the production systems.

# ¿ Feb 29, 2016 21:58

Arsenic Lupin: Apr 12, 2012; This particularly rapid💨 unintelligible 😖patter💁 isn't generally heard🧏‍♂️, and if it is🤔, it doesn't matter💁.

Another startup whose cunning plan I can see flaws in (for those of you inside the Chronicle paywall, the full article link.)

San Francisco Chronicle posted:

Startup Roofstock trades homes like stocks

During the mortgage crisis, institutional investors purchased large swaths of distressed and foreclosed single-family homes, renovated them and rented them out. Some of these investors went public as real estate investment trusts, others remained private and sold bonds backed by the homes.

Now that industry is consolidating, and many are pruning or repositioning their portfolios. To provide a marketplace for their unwanted homes, startups have launched Internet platforms where the houses can be sold � with tenants and property management in place � to buyers ranging from individuals to other institutions.Buyers can go online, get information about a home, its tenants and profit potential, and buy it without ever having seen the property or met the tenants.

Oakland�s Roofstock, which begins operating Thursday, is the newest of these companies. �Roofstock is an online marketplace to allow homes to be traded as efficiently as stocks,� said Gary Beasley, its CEO. Institutional sellers can list homes that have been �certified� by Roofstock, meaning they have met certain criteria. Not all make the cut. �It�s a curated marketplace,� Beasley said.

Roofstock hires third-party inspectors to document the home�s physical condition. It makes sure tenants are current on their rent, paid a security deposit, passed a criminal background check and earned at least three times the rent when they signed the lease. Potential buyers do not get the tenant�s payment history, but they do get a copy of the lease after they put down a nonrefundable deposit.

Roofstock certifies that the seller�s property manager is doing a good job and recommends other local managers who can take over if the current one can�t continue. The seller sets the price � the average is around $140,000 � and there is no negotiation. Roofstock generally charges sellers about 2.5 percent of the sales price, and buyers 0.5 percent. Roofstock provides estimated rents, yields and appreciation potential for each home. But of course these are not guaranteed.

Beasley anticipates that most buyers will pay all cash initially, but conventional financing is available. �We will refer them to lenders,� he said. The site will start with about 70 homes in Florida. But the company plans to be in two to four other markets, including Atlanta and Las Vegas, in the next 30 to 60 days.

Roofstock received two rounds of venture financing last year totaling $13.25 million. The first was led by Khosla Ventures, the second by Bain Capital Ventures. Before starting Roofstock, Beasley was an institutional buyer. He was co-CEO of Starwood Waypoint Residential Trust, a large single-family REIT, until April. That company merged with Colony American Homes to become Colony Starwood in January.

Irvine�s HomeUnion is similar to Roofstock. It has sold more than 500 homes to investors since mid-2014. It still gets about 20 percent of its listings from institutional sellers. The rest come from other sources, including multiple listing services and individual homeowners who have heard about the company.

Don Ganguly, HomeUnion�s CEO, admits that institutions �will never sell their best performing asset.� Relying only on them for listings �is not a scalable model. For us to be a very large company, $1 billion plus, we need multiple sources.�

Potential buyers can go to Homeunion.com and put in their investment goal (income, appreciation or both), financing preference (mortgage or all cash) and how much they want to invest (the minimum is $25,000). They get back a list of suggested properties, with detailed information about each home and local rental market.

Compared with Roofstock, HomeUnion is more of a �one-stop shop,� Ganguly said. Instead of referring buyers to property managers, it manages the property. If a home is not already a rental, HomeUnion will list it, if the home meets its criteria. After the sale, it will renovate the home, find a tenant and manage it.

Yes, I am confident that "certifies the property manager is doing a good job" is something you can trust somebody else to do, as is "manage the property for you even if it isn't local to the manager."

# ¿ Mar 4, 2016 00:13

Arsenic Lupin: Apr 12, 2012; This particularly rapid💨 unintelligible 😖patter💁 isn't generally heard🧏‍♂️, and if it is🤔, it doesn't matter💁.

cheese posted:

That is a fair point. I hadn't considered that their true customers might not be the people using Roofstock to buy properties, but those using it to sell their properties. drat.

Me, either. That was a great call. Roofstock, delivering the bigger suckers every day.

# ¿ Mar 4, 2016 02:28

Arsenic Lupin: Apr 12, 2012; This particularly rapid💨 unintelligible 😖patter💁 isn't generally heard🧏‍♂️, and if it is🤔, it doesn't matter💁.

Twitter is offering valued employees $50k to $200K to stay rather than accepting a job elsewhere. This is also a sinking-ship sign, because it means they're also having trouble hiring.

# ¿ Mar 10, 2016 20:25

Arsenic Lupin: Apr 12, 2012; This particularly rapid💨 unintelligible 😖patter💁 isn't generally heard🧏‍♂️, and if it is🤔, it doesn't matter💁.

Mercury_Storm posted:

Is giving away rapidly dwindling restricted stock something that companies usually attempt to inspire confidence? Seems like every time I hear something like this happening its because a company is circling the drain.

See thread title. On a side note, it really, really pisses employees off who *aren't* offered the anchor money. "You don't want me? I'm out." And it's only when they're gone that you find out they were the only person who knew how to [insert your favorite obscure task here]. The times I've worked places where this kind of offer went out -- I have a habit of killing companies -- everybody took it as a message to get out while the getting was good. I've already read in interviews that nobody wants to hire anybody with Yahoo as their last job, because the assumption is that if you were good, you'd have left long ago.

The rule of thumb used to be that if they rebranded or built a signature building with a big-name architect, it was time to go, because the place was rotten at the top. More than one layoff is also a very bad sign.

computer parts posted:

Don't they have a lot of redundancy in their employment?

When a company is obviously in bad straits, it's the good people who leave; the bad people don't have alternatives and stay. And, of course, the good people who believe in loyalty.

# ¿ Mar 11, 2016 00:53

Arsenic Lupin: Apr 12, 2012; This particularly rapid💨 unintelligible 😖patter💁 isn't generally heard🧏‍♂️, and if it is🤔, it doesn't matter💁.

asdf32 posted:

A company is an organization of humans. If deserving it's roughly as worthy of loyalty as a sports team or any other club.

If you're actually on that team, it's more intense. I was never loyal to (say) the idea of Parcplace-Digitalk, but I loved the technology they sold, and I loved the people who worked with me to build it. I loved *my* work, the work I'd gotten to finish.

You can love a company, and the problem is the day you realize that you made sacrifices for it, but it will make none for you. (I got out of PPD just fine. Some others, not.)

# ¿ Mar 11, 2016 01:59

Arsenic Lupin: Apr 12, 2012; This particularly rapid💨 unintelligible 😖patter💁 isn't generally heard🧏‍♂️, and if it is🤔, it doesn't matter💁.

redscare posted:

Actually, even if you're able to hire, you can only handle so much turnover without operational paralysis, especially in departments like engineering that require a lot of domain knowledge for optimal productivity. Retention of key veteran employees (as well as accurate identification of who is key and who is surplus, management often fails at this) is crucial to pulling off a turnaround plan. The $ amount isn't even that startling when you consider the kind of hiring bonuses that get thrown around for the right skillsets because those people have so many options. But there's a fine line between pulling off the turnaround and crashing into the ground.

There's the problem golden handcuffs are intended to solve (see above) and then there's the as-built meaning. When you're at a company that does this, it signals that the smart people are fleeing, and you should too. Taking the money ties you to a sinking ship. Unless you have personal reasons for staying, such as not wanting to relocate or not wanting to switch jobs in the near term, it's wiser to leave before you're pushed or become unhirable.

# ¿ Mar 11, 2016 22:12

Arsenic Lupin: Apr 12, 2012; This particularly rapid💨 unintelligible 😖patter💁 isn't generally heard🧏‍♂️, and if it is🤔, it doesn't matter💁.

Condiv posted:

lol if you didn't learn this from your first minimum wage job

My first minimum wage job was at the public library, kind of a special case. They were still greeting me with affection (and vice versa) twenty years later. Furthermore, the experience there helped me get at least two software-industry jobs.

# ¿ Mar 12, 2016 16:51

Arsenic Lupin: Apr 12, 2012; This particularly rapid💨 unintelligible 😖patter💁 isn't generally heard🧏‍♂️, and if it is🤔, it doesn't matter💁.

Absurd Alhazred posted:

Wouldn't you know it, it's time for quarterly reports. Let's see how Yahoo!'s been doing!

I literally laughed out loud at "streamline our editorial offering".

"give our users the best experience possible" also made me giggle.

# ¿ Mar 12, 2016 20:32

Arsenic Lupin: Apr 12, 2012; This particularly rapid💨 unintelligible 😖patter💁 isn't generally heard🧏‍♂️, and if it is🤔, it doesn't matter💁.

Cicero posted:

I agree that this is kind of dumb and frustrating, but on the other hand, the cross pollination that happens when people frequently change jobs is part of what made Silicon Valley's tech industry so strong. The ideal for a company is probably a mix of old-timers with institutional knowledge and newbies that bring with them new ideas/best practices.

Yeah, but the ideal for getting a company *funded* is everybody under 30. Or in India or Russia.

e: I have negotiated for extra vacation when moving from one company to another. Sometimes they'll do it.

# ¿ Mar 13, 2016 00:16

Arsenic Lupin: Apr 12, 2012; This particularly rapid💨 unintelligible 😖patter💁 isn't generally heard🧏‍♂️, and if it is🤔, it doesn't matter💁.

ToxicSlurpee posted:

Everybody wants veteran coders but not many places are willing to pay to develop new veteran coders.

Nope. Everybody wants programmers with >3 <10 years of experience. Once you're over 50 Silicon Valley doesn't want you, with rare exceptions. (This has made multiple newspapers.)

# ¿ Mar 13, 2016 03:05

Arsenic Lupin: Apr 12, 2012; This particularly rapid💨 unintelligible 😖patter💁 isn't generally heard🧏‍♂️, and if it is🤔, it doesn't matter💁.

Furthermore, if you stay too long at a company (barring a ridiculous success like Google or Facebook) there's a definite taint of "why didn't anybody else want to hire him/her?" Staying at a known sinking company is very bad for the resume; people are saying in press interviews right now that they wouldn't hire anybody with Yahoo as their last job, because the assumption is that they're losers or they would have gotten out years ago.

# ¿ Mar 13, 2016 05:26

Arsenic Lupin: Apr 12, 2012; This particularly rapid💨 unintelligible 😖patter💁 isn't generally heard🧏‍♂️, and if it is🤔, it doesn't matter💁.

ToxicSlurpee posted:

But it's always "do you have three year's experience? No? Then go away." It's like...if nobody wants to let you get experience then you don't get experienced employees.

Yes. That totally sucks. The deal used to be (decades ago) that companies hired inexperienced employees, they trained them, and then the employees stayed for several years afterward. Then companies stopped being loyal to their employees, and the employees returned the favor. The other catch you're dealing with is that companies are starting to look at new programmers' github checkins on open-source projects and prefer those pre-tested coders. The ability to donate time to open source is also a luxury item, of course.

the talent deficit posted:

Programming internships are almost universally paid at close to market rate. You can expect to make ~20k for 4 months at Google/FB/Apple etc

"Google, Facebook, Apple" is not "almost universally". Those are the most desired employers, and contrariwise those are employers willing to spend money to get the most desired graduates. Furthermore, I used to work at one of the most desired employers, and I know for a fact that at the time I worked there, you had to have gone to one of a specified set of colleges to have a chance of getting an offer. Again, not everybody can afford to go to the big name colleges.

I note also that Google notoriously, until quite recently, required all candidates to submit their transcripts. Vint loving Cerf was asked to submit a transcript. This prioritizes education over experience, which again tends to favor the young. No, Vint isn't young, but who wouldn't want to hire him?

e:

computer parts posted:

pretty much every story I've heard about failed projects derives from either 1) the scope of the work changing mid project or never being clearly determined or 2) someone wanting to save a little money upfront and do things outside of specifications. That's a (perhaps technical) management issue.

Let me show you my scars from the [big database company]/[big infrastructure company] project where one of the demands made by BIC was that there be no design specs, because what to do should arise organically from multiple independent teams working with employees and determining their needs. This was necessary because BIC's needs would change over the course of the project. There was a theory that creating code was an emergent behavior, and that each team's work would magically integrate with the others'. IIRC it was called "Massively Parallel Development".

Arsenic Lupin fucked around with this message at 18:09 on Mar 13, 2016

# ¿ Mar 13, 2016 18:02

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# ¿ May 22, 2024 06:00

Arsenic Lupin: Apr 12, 2012; This particularly rapid💨 unintelligible 😖patter💁 isn't generally heard🧏‍♂️, and if it is🤔, it doesn't matter💁.

on the left posted:

Big name colleges cost the same as third tier toilet colleges, and perversely, the best universities also have the best financial aid for people truly in need. lovely colleges are the most likely to leave students with huge debts and no job.

It makes a lot of sense not to bother recruiting or even looking at resumes from non-target schools. No point in sifting through hay when there are reliable sources of top talent in the amounts you want at top universities.

Which planet are you from? Even the best colleges require students to take out loans, and don't allow them to live at home. Kids who graduate from the best colleges on financial aid graduate hundreds of thousands in debt. In any case, there are a lot of personal circumstances that don't let students go to target schools even if they get in. Family responsibilities (to parents, not just to children). Ability to live at home (free) versus paying for dormitories and food service. Ability to stretch out degree over multiple years so you can earn money in the off-terms. Your guidance counselor never even mentioning that your GPA/SATs/student history would qualify you to apply to a target school.

There is a social divide going on here, not just an intelligence divide. Upper-class kids have family connections that can help pull them into big-name schools. Upper-class kids' parents can afford to pay for coaches to help them with tests, and with admissions. Upper-class kids can afford the music lessons, dance lessons, sports coaches, ... that demonstrate "well rounded" applicants. Upper-class kids' parents don't depend on their kids' incomes, so that the kids can spend summer vacations and so on volunteering in Haiti.

e:

ToxicSlurpee posted:

I've seen programming jobs described as "entry-level" that required a decade of experience in a variety of technologies, a master's degree, and previous experience in more than one field.

The most hilarious one I ever saw was one that required 5 years' Java experience ... even though Java had only existed for three years, and that's if you count Oak.

BTW, it's another piece of evidence of the desperation economy that people with a decade of experience and a master's degree are even applying to entry-level jobs.

Arsenic Lupin fucked around with this message at 21:04 on Mar 13, 2016

# ¿ Mar 13, 2016 21:01

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Debate & Discussion > Tech Nightmares: Ghostline the flux

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