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Comment by dpark | Hacker News Reader

>Carol Bartz was a disaster, she did the worst thing any CEO could ever do, which is to wreck the culture that pervaded Yahoo!.

Sorry, but what culture do you believe Bartz destroyed? I was at Yahoo before Bartz, and left only about a month before she was fired. I don't believe that Bartz destroyed anything. Yahoo has never had a great culture. They've always had an identity crisis. You can go read PG's older essays and see that.

Bartz was fired because she couldn't work a miracle. Yahoo needs some truly amazing changes in order to avoid Sun's fate, and I'm not sure anyone out there can/will deliver what's needed quickly enough. You mentioned Apple as a turnaround example. Exactly where do you think Yahoo is going to get a Steve Jobs?

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When did you join?

I believe Yahoo! definitely had 'culture' in the early days, they were pretty much synonymous with end-user content on the net and the Y! employees and their users were the ones that showed us cool offices, a different kind of company and neat things to do with the web. I think they went downhill since the .com crash and never managed to recover. The final remnants of that were buried in the last two years, now Yahoo! reminds me of an oiltanker with the captain and the rest of the crew below decks. Time will tell if they can turn it around or not but with giants this size even dying will take a long long time.

I don't think you can blame Bartz for culture lost since the "early days". She wasn't even there for three full years. I don't think Carol really hurt the culture much during her tenure. If anything I think she improved it, at least in terms of focus.

To answer your question, though, I started three years ago and some months ago. I came in just a bit before the Microsoft deal fell through.

One thing off the top of my head: she ended the year-end parties. Those parties were great, because they brought lots of people together, and for one night, you forgot everything else and enjoyed yourself, with your spouse/s.o./friend . It was fun to see geeks bathe, shave and dress up for this yearly event.... ;-)

I keed, I keed about the bathing. :-)

I'm a bit embarrassed to say I didn't realize she'd cancelled them. I never went to the parties anyway, but I recall her first one stayed, in spite of opposition, because it was pretty much already paid for.

"Culture" is defined by parties? I think you are confusing "culture" and "perks". I love the culture at Yahoo.

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