[greenyoda]

"I think this reflects well on Mayer's distrust of yahoo's HR department."

I'm confused by this statement. In a highly technical company like Yahoo, aren't the hiring decisions made primarily by the managers of the groups that have the open positions? It doesn't seem that an HR department would have the ability to figure out whether a software developer is even minimally competent.

[joshAg]

But HR is the first gate. If they only let through mediocre people, then the true hiring managers are stuck with taking the best of the ones that get through. The only way to change that is to change how HR gates candidates.