Thomas Hawk » An Open Letter to Carol Bartz, CEO Yahoo Inc.
So many nice points, I’m not sure what to share. Read the whole thing — Thomas serves as an illuminating voicebox in support of flickr.com. Then go read Bartz’ letter to the Yahoo staff.
I know if I were CEO at Yahoo I sure as hell would have a Flickr account. In fact I’d set up accounts really on all of the services that I was commander and chief of and I’d actually use them from time to time to build a familiarity with what works and what doesn’t.
and
Despite the fact that you won’t come down out of your ivory tower to actually get down in the trenches and work with us (your users) to figure out how we can make your products better. Despite all of this. You, yes you, were the highest paid CEO in the Standard & Poors 500 last year.
That’s right. At least according to this report you made $47.2 *million*. Now in addition to paying you all that dough, you also wasted $100 million on a stupid ad campaign saying that the “internet was under new management, yours.”
(true, it was ridiculous; and true, that’s a stunning number in this political climate) and
And your complaint about the fact that your layoffs were leaked ahead of your actually axing people? Get over that. Your acrimony towards bloggers, your iron clad commitment to containment and secrecy within the Yahoo ranks isn’t working. People want honesty and transparency these days. So be transparent. Be human.
That’s the thing that gets me: that as CEO of Yahoo!, (arguably) a company that exists in the social space of the internet, Bartz incredibly has an expectation of privacy around issues that affect so many people, so very, very deeply.