
Marissa Mayer: Yahoo Products Must Ship In 6 Months, Or Don't Bother - kqr2
http://www.sfgate.com/technology/businessinsider/article/Marissa-Mayer-Tells-Yahoo-Employees-Products-Must-3898967.php
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confluence
> _Don't just do something, stand there._

\-- Dr Linda Lewis (Columbia University College of Physicians & Surgeons)

Google has been working on their automatic car tech for ~5 years. Amazon has
been working on the kindle line for ~7 years. Google's project glass took ~4
years and they've been working on social for ~3 years. SpaceX on the falcon
for ~5 years and Tesla Motors on the roadster for ~7 years.

Sometimes the better thing to do is quite literally do nothing before you go
pull off a Nokia like move (sucking up to the losing horse in mobile) or the
like. That doesn't mean pull a RIMM either.

This kind of thinking isn't very good because it completely disregards the
uncertainty present in product development
([http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/How_Doctors_Think#Disregard_of_...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/How_Doctors_Think#Disregard_of_uncertainty)).

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pbiggar
All of the products you list are hardware, which doesn't count. The only
exception is Google's social stuff; Google had shipped many social products to
get where they are today including Gmail, GTalk, Orkut and Buzz. They didn't
sit in their offices and build Google Plus for 10 years, they iterated again
and again, and that's what Mayer is asking for.

~~~
nostrademons
GMail took 3 years from prototype to launch. Google Search was also 3 years
from prototype to incorporation. G+ was shorter, but was built on previously-
existing infrastructure that's been around for a few years.

Now, it's better to spend those 3 years iterating than planning - rumor has it
that the GMail prototype was built in a day. But it's worth being realistic
about how long it takes to build a world-changing product - it's a _long_
road. (In fairness to Marissa, I'm sure she knows this, and I suspect she's
just trying to get the release cycle down so that Yahoo can make forward
progress.)

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vidarh
There's a big difference between major projects and adding features too.

Maybe this is not the right time for Yahoo to do 3 year products simply
because they suck at it (I spent more than 3 years at Yahoo, and I spent most
of that time trying to shepherd projects through to the point my engineering
team would actually get a go-ahead; we were a service function without direct
control of a product, otherwise we should've just gone for it rather than
wait...), and practising on 6 month projects could still bring a ton of useful
improvements or smaller services. One thing to keep in mind with Yahoo is that
it has a _vast_ array of sites and services just sitting there - I bet there's
a ton of poorly monetized services that could get drastic upgrades in well
below 6 months if there's just sufficient fire behind someones asses...

Then they can start trying to add the standalone world-changing stuff again
later, if they're successful.

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programminggeek
This I think is a good rule for Yahoo! You need to have a real product in the
market to get users. Pre announcements don't drive engagement, usage, revenue,
or advertising sales. Eyeballs do. Users do.

Also, the it needs to be a product that could reach 100 million users or $100
million dollars is a great filter. It provides focus.

Unfortunately, based on the last 10 years of Yahoo's corporate history, there
are probably a lot of bad habits and corporate culture shenanigans that will
need to be dealt with before Yahoo's actions match their CEO's marching
orders.

At least Yahoo is trying to do something hopefully more interesting than being
another internet media company held over from the AOL era of the internet.
Perhaps soon someone at Yahoo! will be able to clearly explain what Yahoo! is
and does.

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arthurrr
I don't see the point of this rule. It seems like it would instill fear, and
cause hesitation and second guessing. But I don't like rules in general, I
prefer having philosophies. Personally, I would encourage failure and risk
taking with limited downside and unlimited upside.

There seems to be much adoration on HN for anything Marissa Mayer says. I
watched a few interviews of her, she has an uncomfortable personality, hard to
listen to imo.

~~~
EwanToo
To me it would inspire ambition, not fear, but I guess it depends on the
listener.

If you work at Yahoo (or Google, or Facebook), and the product you want to
work on ins't going to affect 100 million users, then you should probably be
working somewhere else, it's simply the nature of their businesses.

~~~
nhangen
If only it were that easy to create massively successful software.

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EwanToo
It's not meant to be easy, and it never will be, but it has to be the goal.

If you want to make niche software, Yahoo is not the place to go it, anymore
than Unilever is the place for people who want to make small amounts of high
qualty hand made soaps.

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jasonkolb
This pretty much changed my view of her--it displays a lot of naiveté about
how long it takes to develop software. I guess it depends on the market, but
I'd be extremely skeptical about shipping any world-shaking software 6 months
from beginning to write it. Assuming you allow at least a month for testing
and debugging--which is EXTREMELY aggressive--that leaves just five months for
planning and execution. For any kind of complex software you're looking at at
least two or three weeks for planning, at a large company like Yahoo even a
month seems very aggressive. So that leaves 4 months for development. You're
going to lose at least a week to two weeks to meetings related to issues, work
distribution, and so on. Assuming they're using Agile (if not, you have to
allow for project planning meetings etc), and give them 1 month sprints to be
generous, you're looking at about 3-4 iterations of the software before you
ship.

I just don't think this is realistic. It's a nice goal and a nice thought but
unless they're building HTML 5 games or something and counting those as
products it's just not realistic. But we shall see.

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ianterrell
I have a hard time believing she's naive about how long it takes to develop
software after being on the product side of Google for so long.

~~~
mistercow
Statements you make and policies that you implement for your company say a lot
more about your naïveté than positions you previously held.

~~~
ianterrell
Assuming naivety is neglecting multiple data points, among them her extensive
experience at Google working on or with some of their most successful
projects.

Why start there? Why not look at the whole picture and loan her the benefit of
the doubt, saying, "I believe with your experience it's likely that you're
familiar with software development. Therefore I won't assume this is a massive
brainfart, even if part of my mental model of the world thinks it could be.
Without that assumption, what are you trying to communicate with this, and
why? What can I learn from this, and do I need to update my mental model?"

Assuming naivety is unreasonably dismissive, and says more about the critic
than the policy or policymaker.

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rickmode
I'm surprised by the negative comments here. The idea of shipping a minimum
viable product should resonate well with startup-minded folks. I believe PG
himself once said if your project will take longer than 3 months to ship, it's
too long.

6 months is a good target. It'll keep new projects lean and focused. It should
sway the balance of power more to engineering while forcing the business-side
/ product management to work tightly with engineering... Or force the product
managers to take a back seat for the initial release of a project.

~~~
nhangen
It's not the idea of shipping in six months, it's the idea of shipping
something (in six months0 that will be adopted by millions of users.

We don't have the full context of her statement, and I'm guessing (hoping)
that she isn't expecting version 1 to be a runaway success, but will allow the
team to continue iterating and pivoting, if necessary, before making the
determination of whether the project was worthwhile.

~~~
smoyer
I didn't read the quote that way and don't think it's unreasonable to launch
an MVP in six months. The other two criteria are business cases against
starting and are used to decide which projects should proceed towards their
MVPs.

When Google launches a beta (or even alpha), they watch for adoption and
"hockey stick" growth. If a project gains traction, the MVP will be augmented
with features during the 2-3 years it takes to reach 100M users or $100M.

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jkubicek
People seem to be misinterpreting her comments. The product will _ship_ in 6
months and reach 100M users _eventually_.

~~~
pbiggar
It seems almost willful, doesn't it?

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MatthewPhillips
The 100 million user rule seems to eliminate any developer focused products
like YUI, YQL, and Pipes.

~~~
bryanlarsen
Maybe not if they allow indirect user counting. I'm sure that there are 100
million users that use websites that use YUI, for example.

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MatthewPhillips
I'm sure it does, but if I'm working on a new developer product how do I make
the case that it's the next YUI? I think these sort of line-in-the-sand rules
lead to people erring on the side of not doing anything.

~~~
bryanlarsen
Those sorts of estimates are easy. You just go "total market size" * "my
potential penetration as a percent". Yahoo would have the numbers available
for the former, and you guess the latter.

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dawernik
Point is, time to deliver will matter... And stop doing the inconsequential
many... How can anyone argue against that? Wonder when the first big reorg/cut
happens, that will be when you get a true sense of where they are going.

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snowmaker
Does anyone have a link to a more detailed summary of her turnaround plan?

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ramses0
Step 1: Free Food.

Step 2: ???

Step 3: Profit!

~~~
mparlane
Not enough question marks.

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codeonfire
"You ate the food! no one made you eat the food! but you did, so now where's
our $100 million dollars?"

Really if you want big $100 million dollar wins you had better make with big
million dollar rewards for the people delivering. That is impossible because
the management bureaucracy will soak that right up. Yahoo should focus on
rewarding the right people through acquisitions and investments.

~~~
alanctgardner2
I keep looking at this comment and wondering who "the right people" are. Do
you mean buying outside talent, by aqui-hiring? Or dumping a million dollars
on random developers within the company?

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codeonfire
I suggested acquisitions and investment in outside companies that are on track
to create a $100 million product within six months but are maybe undervalued
by the market. They need to look for situations where there aren't six layers
of management to soak up all the rewards.

I've never heard of a company dumping millions of dollars on random developers
and I don't think that's possible. They may dump millions of dollars on a VP,
but by the time it "trickles down" through all the layers to the team it comes
out as "you're lucky to have a job." So in almost all instances it's telling
people to kill themselves to launch a $100 million dollar product in six
months just so they can keep their jobs (with free food of course). Those
people are going to take option 2, quit and go somewhere else, and the product
will never launch.

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alanctgardner2
The goal of $100 million isn't that Yahoo wants money. They want to be a sexy,
ambitious, developer-oriented employer like Google. They want to experiment,
and break things, and most importantly identify what is and isn't working.
Rather than letting some cut-rate dev produce a middling Japanese Finance page
for his whole career, they want a few impressive brands that will draw new,
talented developers in. Free food is part of that branding as well.

Buying a promising startup and smothering it with their existing bureaucracy
would only hurt their reputation at this point.

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photorized
That approach will also make their acquisition or acqui-hire decisions easier.
Based on recent press, they are supposedly setting aside a portion of their
Alibaba proceeds for M&A. "Can we build this in 6 mos? No? Let's go ahead and
buy then."

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Zenst
Probably a very good move in that with talent, sometimes you have to box it in
so it can break out. Hopefully this blanket rule appraoch will restore focus.

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Tichy
Free food, eh? Sounds like a great place to work.

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duxup
I'm going to guess the rest of the all-hands meeting provided a bit more
context and clarity.

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pjy04
Great leadership. Simple rules to follow for a big org. Product managers are
now on notice

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ricksta
anyone felt 6 month is kinda long? I guess it depend on the type of product,
but wasn't the first version of Gmail written in a day?

~~~
boyter
I'd say most projects can be knocked together to a basic proof of concept in a
day. However getting it to be able to support 100 million users (as per the
article), or even be worth showing takes a lot longer then that.

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dmishe
That's the spirit

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Evbn
Every week this looks more like a stealth takeover by Google, with Mayer as an
advance agent grooming Yahoo for assimilation. Or just some healthy spread of
Google cukture across the industry.

~~~
signalsignal
I'd wager on "beginning of the end". Shake up large projects until only the
smaller, "quick wins" remain, then sell off the assets. It's easier that way
from what I hear.

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alphazulu
For some reason Marissa reminds me of the King in that Bugs Bunny cartoon.
"Where's my Hasenpfeffer!"
[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lDe8fTgVUZw&feature=youtu...](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lDe8fTgVUZw&feature=youtube_gdata_player)

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gothy
Best decision ever.

