I did find that sentence a little strange myself. I didn't think jealousy from the writer, my first thought was "why should the employees be jealous?" Is it the employees of Summify, didn't they all receive a nice payment ($1m each)? And I can't imagine any of the Yahoo employees being jealous, well, perhaps, but I doubt it is the first time Yahoo have made a millionaire teenager. Even if they are, let them use it as motivation to build a valuable product of their own.
Obviously the writer means yahoo employees. Maybe not jealousy but certainly frustration. Wouldn't you feel frustrated if your company spent $30 million on what is basically the face of a hype machine especially when your company wants to integrate the hype machine's "tech" into your products even though it would probably take a few days to get similar results in house?
More to the point, I've no doubt that some Yahoo employees have likely investigated this sort of tech and built prototypes, only to get shot down by middle management.
I've no special insight at Yahoo (had a couple friends work there) but for any sufficiently large company with employees as talented as Yahoo (YUI, YQL, etc) this has surely happened. So... to have your idea/prototype/demo shot down, then later $30m spent on essentially what you'd offered the company for free... that's gotta be frustrating.
Again, pure speculation that this had happened, but I'd be surprised if no one internal to Yahoo had floated/demos something like this before. They certainly could have bought some of the hype (stephen fry, etc) during a rebrand. But... instead, they buy from outside vs using and promoting internally.
Once more - just speculation, but that's were I would suspect frustration would come from.
> investigated this sort of tech and built prototypes, only to get shot down by middle management.
Bingo.
in fairness the culture there prob prevented people from even feeling this innovative and self motivated.
I've worked in a couple of large orgs where i've told management about great little cheap ideas that just get ummed and ahhed and then forgotten (despite in 2 instances using my own free time to make a prototype).
No doubt, and that's part of the legacy of having "hey, we're a media company!" leadership from many moons ago.
There used to be an incredible mix of talent at yahoo, and they squandered a lot of that.
What's also interesting is that no one (yet? - maybe I missed it?) seemed to mention the Yahoo 'kiss of death' - how many acquisitions have they done that end up never seeing the light of day, or get shut down? Brickhouse seemed like it might be successful, but culturally that didn't seem to work out too well over time.
Having been in the position of shooting down all to often, the challenge for managers here is that often we get 100 absolutely crap ideas for every gem, yet the developers who bring them to us often are totally blinkered about which ideas are a fit for the company and/or are remotely realistic.
That makes it very easy to make calls that in retrospect might seem extremely stupid. Even more so, many of the engineers who get shot down for truly bad ideas will still insist they are good.
Getting the balance right for what you spend time on is very hard.
(That said, I did work at Yahoo until 2005, and at least "my little corner" of Yahoo did feel very bureaucratic and not very conducive to innovation even then)
Agreed. Which is why I don't pitch too many ideas anymore in my current role unless I've done some exploratory coding.
That has led to 2 different internal products and I'm presently working on something to replace a piece of commercial software that they paid almost $1 million for and doesn't work/has serious limitations. However I did it out of band because I found it interesting. I guess it comes down to put up or shut up.
Often when you come up with an idea, then go to try and do it you realise its 100x times harder than you thought
When I read things like this, I assume the software has nothing to do with the hire. This guy has shown, at an early age, that he is a real player. He has the right[1] kind of people backing him which has caused his name to be talked about in the right circles.
A major viewpoint that separates me from "when I was a kid" was the realization that the continuum of everything (talent, intellect, potential for evil, charisma, etc) exists. One judges the world by the people around oneself, but those are not limits of human capability, those are the friends one keeps. That realization took a long time to sink in.
Good on this guy. Nice play :)
1: "right" in the sense of a situation like this occurring, not in the sense of moral or intellectual superiority
That's their job though. Don't forget, the face of that new hype machine is also an employee at Yahoo now. I am sure if he stays at Yahoo long enough he will also be asked to integrate other acquisitions into software he is working on.
You make a valid point about Yahoo being able to produce similar results in house but the software alone doesn't get you a client base, publicity (certainly not the same level of publicity the Summify purchase has received) and the 3 guys they have hired.
So what if he's only 17? If he has good ideas about how to take Yahoo's mobile news presence forward then the problem should disappear. Of course if he's a poor developer then other employees have the right to be frustrated but it should only be based on his competency and not what he is worth.
