Actually, I wouldn't be terribly happy if my company gave me a daily free lunch. It would be a disincentive to get out of the office and away from my co-workers once a day, which is something that I think makes me happier and more productive. (I work in a big city, where diverse types of food are a short walk away. If you work in an office park in Silicon Valley, I can see why a free lunch might be more appealing.)
Also, having a cell phone paid for by my employer might give my employer the idea that I'm always available to them, which I don't want to encourage. Since I'm a developer of software that doesn't get deployed to the web in real time, it isn't likely that an issue can't wait until the next work day. For dire emergencies, they have my home number.
> It would be a disincentive to get out of the office and away from my co-workers once a day, which is something that I think makes me happier and more productive.
If stepping away from your coworkers makes you happy and productive, your company has bigger problems than charging for meals.
I actually like my co-workers very much, but being an introverted type (as I suspect many developers are), I need a break from people once in a while. Even being with my best friends for ten hours straight would be a bit tiring for me.
He didn't say that it makes him "happy and productive", he said it makes him "happier and more productive".
You do realize that there is a difference here, right? I assume that you are an intelligent being that knows basic English grammar and hence you must have simply misread that comment.
I really like the "we'll provide free food onsite, and if you go out to lunch with anyone, we'll pay for that too (but keep it reasonable)" -- encouraging employees go to out to lunch together, or to have lunch with people from other companies, or potential customers, or hires, or whatever, seems worth the cost of lunch. You may or may not be able to deduct the cost of the meals (depending on who they're with), and only at 50%, but who cares.
Basically all good engineers I've talked to at places with free food onsite value it at at least cost, and often at >>1x cost. Encouraging people to go be social at lunch itself (and not to eat at their desks, at least not every day) is a win for retention. Check the zillion times this has come up on HN.
Not offering free food will hurt in recruiting a lot more than the cost, even if you moved $1 in food costs directly into salary.
I mean, if even Yahoo! eventually figures it out, it is probably true.
Google gave out cell phones as a gift to promote interest in their mobile business. Then they gave out cell phones for traditional work related purposes as well.
>Also, having a cell phone paid for by my employer might give my employer the idea that I'm always available to them.
Heh. well, I've been on call forever. Nearly everyone I know that works at google is also on-call. (they seem to have a hierarchy, where the more valuable folks don't get called very often.)
So yeah, company cell phone? yeah, sure, that is expected. I think the thing is that most people think of an iphone as nicer than your average cellphone. From that perspective, e.g. we are going to call you anyhow, they might as well give you a nice cellphone to carry around.
(that said, a cellphone without a keyboard is of limited utility. I need to be able to type and see the screen at the same time. SSH on iphone doesn't cut it.)
Not only that, when IT departments start thinking about company owned phones they start thinking about securing important data so they start locking things down and it would be bad if some sexual harrasment was being done with company property so they need some monitoring and filtering and on and on and down the rabbit hole it goes.
I wouldn't say GitHub is the best system for code review. Pull requests work OK for open source and outside contributors, but I'd rather use Gerrit instead.
The best thing about a free lunch isn't necessarily that you'll be eating nice food (hopefully) and saving a bit of money. It's that it forces you to ditch your machine or your ritual and to spend some non-work time with your work colleagues.
As a regular desk-eater (like many I assume) you definitely miss that aspect in favour of getting a bit more work done.
"Cute" it may be, but if new leadership inspires enough people to step up, want to do something great, and their path for bringing those ideas to fruition are cleared, then Yahoo can succeed.
That said, the biggest gripe I've read about Yahoo is the insane amount of middle management. If anyone (regardless of position -- an intern, an engineer, an architect) has an idea, I would hope there is a path for that idea to be evaluated and, if show potential, is allowed to come to fruition.
I think it works both ways -- neither will Yahoo create great products until they become a great place to work, again.
This is why I think Mayer was a great choice. If you're at Yahoo and disillusioned, or considering an offer and on the fence...you have to latch on to something representing change. Marissa wasn't the only possible choice, but she was at least as good as any other imaginable choices.
Now I'm making her sound like Obama. I'm much more comfortable with that conflation than the Steve Jobs one though.
Oh, and sorry about the motherhood pun. I didn't even notice it til the reread.
I know almost nothing about her, but Marissa Mayer doesn't come off as a Steve Jobs or Elon Musk-like "visionary" who will drive Yahoo to unexplored and unexpected market openings. Her approach seems to be to make Yahoo a great place to work, attract and empower talent, and let said talent churn out great products. Some would say that she should focus on changing the market direction of the company, and that's certainly one of her responsibilities. At the same time, I think what she's doing is admirable and valuable. It's certainly putting Yahoo on the map in the communities that matter. Let's hope Yahoo can ride this momentum and make something of it!
As I said, I barely know her/of her so my opinion is based on superficial things like reputation. The main point I was trying to make is not that she's not a "visionary" but that the things she's doing to help Yahoo are admirable and worthy of praise >.>
Not every CEO has to be a visionary. If the CEO can hire good people who have good ideas and get out of their way, she doesn't have to provide all the ideas herself. But she'd need to create an environment where good ideas can be born and come to fruition. Giving people free food won't do this. You'd need to set up a culture in which good ideas actually get rewarded and people aren't afraid to fail.
They do! Modern MBA programs focus heavily on a concept called servant leadership. It can get surprisingly in-depth, but on the surface its a simple idea that can be summed up in two steps. First, hire good people. Second, provide the support they need to do their job.
Modern management models have tended to move away from issuing rules and directives. These days its more about designing jobs from which the employee can derive some self-satisfaction and than providing business context so employees can self-direct toward the company's goals.
That's actually what I'm trying to say - she doesn't come off as a visionary (in my opinion) but if she is able to set up a good and healthy work environment then she won't need to be the one coming up with all the ideas.
That's part of the reason I put visionary in quotations. It's a slippery term. In this case, when you think Steve Jobs = visionary you don't think "he made Apple a great place to work." Since Steve Jobs seems to be one of the paragons of "visionary" leadership in the valley, all I meant to say was that Marissa is not in the same mold.
Yahoo! is a conglomerate with many, many offerings. It isn't a company with one product. From the tales in the valley, it seems that bureaucracy and infighting are the greatest impediment to doing good work. "Hire great people and get out of their way" is a great strategy -- not everyone has to be a despot.
I've worked at a few companies where a fresh CEO asked the rank and file for a list of problems, suggestions, ideas, etc. But I've never seen it make much of a difference. I fear Marissa Meyer is already toast -- just like Yahoo.
I've always said that was Carol's job at Yahoo. If she didn't make tough choices to cut costs and trim products, Y! may very well have face-planted, hard. She did very little to create growth, but she did a good job to realign & reorg the company to a position where someone like Marissa can come in and create growth.
So far all of Marissa Meyer's moves (at least the one's getting publicity) have made Yahoo! a bit more Google-like. While that's probably for the best, I will be real interested to see when/where she breaks with Google culture for the first time.
Correlation is not causation. We don't really know what combination of the many factors in Google's culture made them so successful. For all we know, it may have been due entirely to the people they hired, and the same team might have produced great results with or without all the perks that Google is famous for.
You can't create culture with edicts, culture is an emergent property of the community that either is supported or fought by the power structure at hand. A corporation is like an ecosystem, you can create the conditions that will allow a healthier culture to flourish but it will likely take a huge amount of time for that culture to take hold, assuming that there aren't other roadblocks still in the way such as entrenched middle management with different ideas about the place they want to work.
Based on the things that came out of google labs, I think it's more than possible that a seriously great product can be a byproduct of a google-type office and not just a prerequisite for said office environment.
i've known several ex-yahoo people. they all agree that yahoo has no shortage of raw engineering talent in the trenches; it's just that they aren't given the environment they need to get things done. hopefully mayer will change that.
Yahoo! is in crisis mode and I think Marissa is making the right moves. If what she says inspires current employees and keeps talent then it is all worth while.
Now the pessimist could see Yahoo! as a dying company/stock. Apple was in the same position before Steve Jobs came back.
Yahoo! could possible die a slow death or this could mark the start of a recovery. Marissa understands it begins with products and to have great products, engineers need to be happy and inspired. Perhaps Yahoo! could be seen as a down stock and is poised for growth? What if Yahoo! triples in value over the next 3 years? The best time to buy into a stock is when it is down.
I will add that what Marissa is doing is also making Yahoo! more attractive to prospective employees. If a prospective employee has the hypothetical choice between working at Facebook and working at Yahoo! and hears about the changes that Marissa has made then they may be inclined to work at Yahoo! Perhaps they have heard about the poor stock performance since Facebook's IPO. If that prospective talent chooses to work at Yahoo! instead of Facebook then it is a win.
This is clearly the Hail Mary for Yahoo. I give the board a ton of credit for having the gumption, though I realize they tried every other permutation of crisis reaction first.
And they couldn't have chosen anyone more appropriate for the strategy than Marissa Mayer. I have no use for Yahoo in my life, but I'm really rooting for her and them, and I hope they change my mind.
You raise an interesting point about stock. It defies all logic to believe that Marissa could achieve what Steve Jobs did. But that doesn't mean it isn't worth a small bet.
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[ 3.7 ms ] story [ 127 ms ] thread1. Give employees free lunch 2. Give every employee an iphone 3. Github for code review
Also, having a cell phone paid for by my employer might give my employer the idea that I'm always available to them, which I don't want to encourage. Since I'm a developer of software that doesn't get deployed to the web in real time, it isn't likely that an issue can't wait until the next work day. For dire emergencies, they have my home number.
If stepping away from your coworkers makes you happy and productive, your company has bigger problems than charging for meals.
You do realize that there is a difference here, right? I assume that you are an intelligent being that knows basic English grammar and hence you must have simply misread that comment.
Not offering free food will hurt in recruiting a lot more than the cost, even if you moved $1 in food costs directly into salary.
I mean, if even Yahoo! eventually figures it out, it is probably true.
Heh. well, I've been on call forever. Nearly everyone I know that works at google is also on-call. (they seem to have a hierarchy, where the more valuable folks don't get called very often.)
So yeah, company cell phone? yeah, sure, that is expected. I think the thing is that most people think of an iphone as nicer than your average cellphone. From that perspective, e.g. we are going to call you anyhow, they might as well give you a nice cellphone to carry around.
(that said, a cellphone without a keyboard is of limited utility. I need to be able to type and see the screen at the same time. SSH on iphone doesn't cut it.)
And why even that? A laptop I could understand, but phone?
Years ago, that would have meant BlackBerries all around. Today, it means iOS.
As a regular desk-eater (like many I assume) you definitely miss that aspect in favour of getting a bit more work done.
That said, the biggest gripe I've read about Yahoo is the insane amount of middle management. If anyone (regardless of position -- an intern, an engineer, an architect) has an idea, I would hope there is a path for that idea to be evaluated and, if show potential, is allowed to come to fruition.
This is why I think Mayer was a great choice. If you're at Yahoo and disillusioned, or considering an offer and on the fence...you have to latch on to something representing change. Marissa wasn't the only possible choice, but she was at least as good as any other imaginable choices.
Now I'm making her sound like Obama. I'm much more comfortable with that conflation than the Steve Jobs one though.
Oh, and sorry about the motherhood pun. I didn't even notice it til the reread.
Modern management models have tended to move away from issuing rules and directives. These days its more about designing jobs from which the employee can derive some self-satisfaction and than providing business context so employees can self-direct toward the company's goals.
Why isn't that, in itself, "visionary"?
I've always said that was Carol's job at Yahoo. If she didn't make tough choices to cut costs and trim products, Y! may very well have face-planted, hard. She did very little to create growth, but she did a good job to realign & reorg the company to a position where someone like Marissa can come in and create growth.
I'm with you; my belief is that 95% of leadership is picking the right people, but, then, I'm a bad leader.
It seems like it's worth a shot. I mean, Yahoo has tried and failed many other strategies.
A "Google-like office", without a seriously great product, will probably be tough sell, longterm.
If you want to remove jams, just make sure decisions are taken as low as possible in the hierarchy.
Now the pessimist could see Yahoo! as a dying company/stock. Apple was in the same position before Steve Jobs came back.
Yahoo! could possible die a slow death or this could mark the start of a recovery. Marissa understands it begins with products and to have great products, engineers need to be happy and inspired. Perhaps Yahoo! could be seen as a down stock and is poised for growth? What if Yahoo! triples in value over the next 3 years? The best time to buy into a stock is when it is down.
I will add that what Marissa is doing is also making Yahoo! more attractive to prospective employees. If a prospective employee has the hypothetical choice between working at Facebook and working at Yahoo! and hears about the changes that Marissa has made then they may be inclined to work at Yahoo! Perhaps they have heard about the poor stock performance since Facebook's IPO. If that prospective talent chooses to work at Yahoo! instead of Facebook then it is a win.
And they couldn't have chosen anyone more appropriate for the strategy than Marissa Mayer. I have no use for Yahoo in my life, but I'm really rooting for her and them, and I hope they change my mind.
You raise an interesting point about stock. It defies all logic to believe that Marissa could achieve what Steve Jobs did. But that doesn't mean it isn't worth a small bet.