[nostromo]

Just recently I read pg's old essay on Microsoft. (http://www.paulgraham.com/microsoft.html)

> The surprising fact is, brilliant hackers—dangerously brilliant hackers—can be had very cheaply, by the standards of a company as rich as Microsoft. They can't hire smart people anymore, but they could buy as many as they wanted for only an order of magnitude more.

This seems like Marissa Mayer's strategy.

[sampsonjs]

"They[Microsoft] can't hire smart people anymore" is easily the most fatuous thing he's written.

[orangethirty]

But what happens to these hackers when they arrive to a company that has Yahoo's culture? That's their problem. Their culture is the same one as any shitty American company.

[brador]

She's trying to make a new culture by buying up A players as aqui-hires.

Question is, will it work long term or is it a shortsighted gimmicky strategy?

[nostromo]

The essay addressed this:

> Put them all in a building in Silicon Valley, surrounded by lead shielding to protect them from any contact with Redmond.

Assuming Yahoo should do the same. :)

[orangethirty]

Does Yahoo! have a track record of doing this?

[shawndumas]

the mobile team is on one floor in one building at the sunnyvale campus