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Monday, February 23, 2009

The Yahoo Management Structure: Who Is In and Who Is Out?

sidewalkbroom

On Friday, BoomTown first reported that new Yahoo CEO Carol Bartz is likely to be announcing a sweeping new management structure soon, which can only mean the possibility that some existing top execs are likely to be broomed out, even as some new ones are ushered in.

“This is going to be a full-scale peanut butter recall,” joked one exec, referring to the infamous “Peanut Butter Manifesto,” which was sent around the company several years ago by former exec Brad Garlinghouse. It laid bare the problems at Yahoo, most especially a decided lack of decision-making and lugubrious levels of managers.

Here is the sticky skinny.

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Monday, February 9, 2009

Will Tough-Talking Bartz Reorg Yahoo Soon and Finally Blue-Pill the “Matrix”?

My favorite anecdote collected so far about new Yahoo CEO Carol Bartz is the one in which she called together two separate groups of execs who were direct reports of former Yahoo CEO Jerry Yang and President Sue Decker.

Bartz, several sources recounted, went around the table and asked them one by one what they actually did, making various outspoken comments along the way about management.

Stories like this about Bartz’s take-charge style have been ricocheting through Yahoo as she navigates the troubled company to come up with a plan to revive it.

But of all the various things many employees I have talked to hope she does first is dump the “matrix” organizational structure that many at Yahoo have grown to despise.

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About Kara

Kara Swisher started covering digital issues for The Wall Street Journal's San Francisco bureau in 1997 and also wrote the BoomTown column about the sector. With Walt Mossberg, she co-produces and co-hosts D: All Things Digital, a major high-tech and media conference. Read more »

Ethics Statement

Here is a statement of my ethics and coverage policies. It is more than most of you want to know, but, in the age of suspicion of the media, I am laying it all out.

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