Yahoo's Decker Blasted For Choosing "Lifer" Patel As Co-Honcho*

Henry Blodget | June 20, 2008 1:16 PM

suedecker.jpgYahoos have had a chance to evaluate the Sue Decker shakeup. Bottom line? They seem okay with her choice of Hilary Schneider as head of the US business, but they want her run out of town for appointing "Yahoo lifer" Ash Patel as head of products.

ash_patel_thumb.jpgKara Swisher:

[A] spanking new Global Products group...will be headed by Ash Patel, who is currently EVP of Yahoo’s Platforms and Infrastructure division... [The] fiefdoms of communications and communities SVP Brad Garlinghouse, Search’s Vish Makhijani and Front Door head Tapan Bhat will move under into Global Products.

Which would explain why Makhajani is now headed out the door and Garlinghouse is on the fence about the moves. Bhat is also reported unsure about the new structure and is considering his options.

[T]he prospect of working for Patel is not a welcome one for some Yahoo execs in the Network division. Patel has been at Yahoo since 1996, which makes him one of the oldest of old guards at the company.

“No one wants to report up through him,” said one Yahoo exec. “He’s a Yahoo lifer and not the kind of dynamic leader we need.”

Ash that bad? Anyone want to defend this choice?

More importantly, anyone want to argue that Yahoo is not disintegrating? The exodus over the past week is astonishing, as are some of the comments on our Sue Decker post about morale at the company.

See Also: Sue Decker Driving Yahoo Shakeup--Is She Taking Over?

*UPDATE:

A former Yahoo exec weighs in. No Ash defense yet:

Putting ash in charge of more stuff is a disaster- he is a nice guy but a terrible manager with grandiose visions but no results. No one outside of a few old engineers have any respect for him and no one will listen to him. I don’t think he will get many coming to his defense.

 

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29 Comments

Yahoo! Alumni said:
Ash is incredibly smart and incredibly unable to effect change in that organization. How can they expect the folks that broke the company slowly to fix the company quickly?
Nobody said:
Hoping this isn't true. As mentioned, he's a nice guy, but we need new blood. If you thought you had an exodus BEFORE this, just wait...
purple haze said:
it was a huge mistake on sue's part and just shows how clueless she is.

btw, i would say that hilary is still somewhat of an unknown quantity. i would say that the silence is reflective of the jury still being out on her than tacit approval...

agree with fred wilson's post that there is opportunity in this chaos but unfortunately ash is not the one to seize it...
Garbanzo said:
Hilary is a smart woman, but has built a career on smoke and mirrors. Her entry into the Internet in 1999 was to head up Times Mirror Interactive, which was a shell company that Mark Willes set up before he was tossed out of Times Mirror and the company was sold to Tribune. TMI never got a chance to do anything other than business cases. Then Hilary parked at Tribune Interactive before she was shoved out the door by Tribune folks. Then she went to Red Herring and ran that into the ground (it has since reemerged post-Hilary). Then she spent unremarkable time at Knight Ridder Digital after Dan Finnegan had got things rolling in the right direction. Tony Ridder took a shine to her and she went over to KRI corporate to oversee some newspapers until KRI was sold and she cashed out there. Frankly, you'd be hard-pressed to show any value she's created in the past ten years (even her time as GM of the Baltimore Sun was very contentious).
CmonHenry (URL) said:
C'mon Henry.

It is not imploding.

Tons of opportunity.

Getting rid o EVPs, SVPs not a bad thing.

Much clearer path to monetization now.

Didn't you used to be an analyst?

Why would you panic?

It's about Rev as Fred said -- the re-org as reported by Kara will help that. The company has acted like a startup (it's all about users!) - needs to start acting like a for profit public company (it's all about cash flow growth!).

This is all good.
The basic asset is still strong: amazing global brand and 500 million users. Also still throwing off a lot of cash, at least for now.

However... after the trends of the past four years, plus six months of purgatory, plus Google, plus recession, Yahoo needs to clean house and then reload immediately. This death-by-a-thousand cuts will grind morale to the bone.
CmonHenry (URL) said:
Agreed --
That's why all these folks leaving isn't bad -- what we're seeing is an aggressive move to rip off the bandaid.

So when people start leaving in a hurry -- that's good, not bad, especially these senior people.

Who has left that can talk about significant cash flow gains under their watch? Not product, not users -- revenue growth?

This is a GOOD thing.

It's about speed to a new steady state that can start the cash flow machine growing right now.

pasan said:
Decker's been at Yahoo since 2001. She needs to go, too. They need some hardcore folks with serious product vision to get them back on track.

exhoo said:
I hate to sound so shrill, but Hilary is a joke. I'm amazed how, in comparison to other execs, she hasn't been publicly ripped to shreds yet. She can do nothing more that parrot talking points and snuggle up to Sue.
Garbanzo: Red Herring has "re-emerged"? Even without noting the pubs current troubles (http://www.alleyinsider.com/2008/5/remainder_of_tech_mag_red_herring_evicted_from_office) it's hard to argue that it re-emerged -- someone just purchased the name and other assets. It's a new company, for whatever that's worth.
Neek said:
Somewhere out there, Larry, Sergey and Eric are having trouble containing their laughter at how everything is playing into their hands with hardly any doing on their part; and what's happening as noted in this post only accelerates Yahoo's decline, no matter how people say removing SVP's and EVPs are the magic bullet that brings it back to its former glory.

How in the world does moving the deck chairs like this really going to help them when a lot of people that matter (Garlinghouse, Zawodny, et al) are out and the people who got the company into this mess in the first place (Jerry, Sue and Ash) are left behind to try and "fix" a company nearing rigor mortis.

Might as well bring Semel back into active duty to complete this tragedy and really start entertaining us.
Brownian Motion said:
Totally agree that someone needs to take a weed-whacker to the SVP/EVPs, but Patel is already vested in place, doesn't seem to know or care why the competition is wasting them, and has the respect of very few managers (to say nothing of widespread distaste by engineers who've written a line of code since the millennium). He's basically their version of Microsoft's (now retired) David Cole. They need someone burning, hungry, and innovative, not someone who's already earned their stripes. Oh, well, looks like it will be another summer of 37 hour weeks...
Zohanberg said:
Is Yang the only Asian left at Yahoo? The founder of a company bowing down to people like Se-mel, Bo-stock, Decker, and a bunch of Indian guys. No wonder he's loser. How can this "man" ever go back to Taiwan and show his face again?
Richard Roma said:
Patel? Ravadem Patel? How am I gonna make a livin' on these deadbeats? Where did you get this one from the morgue?
Richard Roma said:
"Patel"? Fuck you. Fucking Shiva handed this guy a million dollars, told him "Sign the deal!" he wouldn't sign. And the god Vishnu too, into the bargain.
T-Man said:
Talk about rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic! The Yahoo board needs to wake-up and assert their fiduciary responsibilities. Sue Decker and Hillary Schneider might be fine people, but it's been their leadership that has brought the company to the brink of oblivion. One gets the sense that they are operating as if there's always going to be an escape hatch (i.e. an acquisition), although the reality is that they just got done shopping the business to every imaginable white knight and there wasn't one to be found.

A weak CEO, a decelerating economy, entrenched mediocre management, and a weak board. Where is this all heading? If the over/under bet is at $20 a share, I'm taking under. Significantly under. I won't be shocked of the stock settles in at $15, with much brain flight to follow.

Yahoo has always been an arrogant and self-important company. It's no surprise that this organizational attitude will ultimately lead them to destroy a decade's worth of shareholder value gain. Yes folks, the fat lady is singing a very sad song.
stone said:
I agree with T-man. Sue Decker and Hillary Schneider must go before they can fix the company. Does their board actually know what's happening here?
Garbanzo said:
Peter: I stand corrected. So Hilary rode it into the ground and it didn't yet reemerge. The larger point, which still stands, that that her career pre-Yahoo was based more on sizzle than steak and she's gotten ahead more by impressing others with her intellect and polish than with actual results. Failing up, anyone?
AJ said:
"Henry Blodget said:Jun. 20, 5:57 PM
The basic asset is still strong: amazing global brand and 500 million users. Also still throwing off a lot of cash, at least for now. "

Senior Yahoo! execs do talk about the "unique assets" - but assets are things you fight to control, and businesses are things you fight to grow. Let's hear more about the business, and less about the assets.

This looks more and more like a bunch of people playing King of the Hill on top of a pile of money, and rhetoric about assets only reinforces the impression.

Sue should know, assets only depreciate.


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rhett (URL) said:
640-802 Yahoo's Decker Blasted For Choosing "Lifer" Patel As Co-Honcho* Times have changed. As long as you like it.
tyriq (URL) said:
Treat it with respect.Have respect for someone. that's monkey business. 640-802 / 350-018 / 642-812 / 646-363 / 642-453 / 70-643

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