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0 pointscodingdave6y ago0 comments

It is a question of perspective. She was the head of a sinking ship, yes. But did she cause the sinking, or did she recoup the most returns possible for the investors before it sank?

I wasn't there. I don't know the inside story. I'm not going to take sides. But neither am I going to assume that she has poor business skills just because she headed up a shutdown effort.

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tamizhar6y ago

> But did she cause the sinking

A captain that demands changing colors of the sinking ship on a whim may not be the cause of the sinking but certainly isn't addressing the sinking.

https://www.nytimes.com/2014/12/21/magazine/what-happened-wh...

For months, the team had settled on blue and gray. If users were going to read emails on their phones all day long, the thinking went, it was best to choose the most subtly contrasting hues. But now, Mayer explained, she wanted to change the colors to various shades of purple, which she believed better suited Yahoo’s brand.

According to one senior executive, Sharma’s body language changed the moment Mayer issued her request. He looked deflated. Altering the color of such an intricate product would require that members of his team spend all night adjusting colors in thousands of places. He slumped off and prepared to tell his staff the bad news.

Aeolun6y ago

I don’t know, but I can change the colors of all our products from one single place in the code. If you have to do it in multiple places something is probably wrong.

Excecutives change their minds on a whim, you are much better off anticipating that.

_0nac6y ago

Does your codebase date from 1995? Because some of Yahoo's does. Time to send Jerry a nastygram about not adequately preparing the codebase for arbitrary color changes 25 years ago?

a_imho6y ago

Picking a sinking ship to head a shutdown effort is not exactly a life calling for such influential people I would imagine though.

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