http://www.cogmap.com/chart.php?id=123

Definitely a great example of a memo where “just show me the new org chart” makes a lot of sense.

Yahoos,

Sue

You know things are bad when it takes several paragraphs to do a ’shorter’ comment.

Game time? Where does Yahoo find these people?

Someone do a video mockumentary of the dopes in management running Yahoo - have Terry Take delivering ‘pain time’ to all managment who just feel the need to spout tired ‘game time’ cliches.

Yahoo is the Detroit Lions of the internets.

Your post was just as exciting as the Yahoo memo that was meant to be leaked.

And that makes it right for Mike to post it? If anything, that’d make him a sap… being manipulated by the Yahoo PR machine (and, I assume, knowingly so?)

By the way, I can only think of two reasons that this memo was so god-awful boring and impenetrable:
1) Y! (unrealistically) expected it would NOT be leaked.
2) Y! knew it’d be leaked, and wanted it to be so boring, so inoffensive that no one would pay attention or care.

If it’s #1, then Y! is naive, but the theory that Mike was right to post it ’cause that’s what Y! really wanted is, well, bogus.

If it’s #2, that’s even more disturbing. It gives pause to other companies wanting to maintain a vibrant and open corporate culture, due to the demonstrated threats of assholes who forward confidential memos and the amoral folks who post ‘em.

I don’t believe that “aw, everyone does it!” or “hey, what kinda moron REALLY expects employees to honor confidentiality agreements and, well, general etiquette?” are valid excuses at all.

@ 45/6 - killing it Mike. lol.

@42, 50, 68 - gimme a break fellas. you know how sick we [techno-geeks] are of seeing emails like this. as a former msftie who bailed for a .com startup that got gobbled up twice and then spitout, I take emails like this with a grain of salt. IMHO, just causes more confusion, hearsay, and back-chatter among the rank and file. as one of those rank and file types in a med-size software company - I think its refreshing for Mike to post this email rather than seeing it buried inside the walls of YHOO.

@73 - thx for the late afternoon humor. I needed it! Just heard that a good buddy of mine just got laid off and to top that - his wife’s due date was yesterday.

“In the long run we’re all dead”

unless you have a CXO’s golden parachute.

What’s “long” on the net?

(pictures say a thousand words…)

1. Demand Channels: maximizing accountability through APG, YPN, and MPD

2. Commercialization Statetization: Scalability of customer demand.

3. Organizationalizing: Streamlining expanding bandwith through acronyms.

I am excited by Ms. Decker’s comments. By maximizing efficiencies we can all look forward to exciting team building in 2007!

the moment a high-ranking executive makes a decision to send an email to all employees, they are deciding to make it public. do you really think they would send this email to all yahoo employees if they didn’t want it leaked?

it’s very sweet of you to think there is a boundary there, however, it is non-existent and known.

This isn’t just a minor nitpick, either. You know what happens when you and other bloggers persist in disrespecting boundaries in this context? Internal memos become even more bland, executives share less with their employees, and everyone loses. When every possible written conversation between execs and employees is subject to posting on sites like yours, that doesn’t bode well for the possibility of frank and open communications in the workplace.

Sure, you’ll argue “But if I don’t do it, Valleywag or some other site will publish it and I’ll lose a scoop!” That’s no defense.

Why not hold yourself to a higher standard? Heck, why not hold yourself to standards, period?

Signed,
Not a Yahoo employee (nor even much of a user of Yahoo stuff)