Former Yahoo CFO talks culture change

EPISODE OVERVIEW:

Podcast guest, Ken Goldman provides an inside look into his time as CFO for Yahoo during the Marissa Mayer years.  

In this episode, he shares his thoughts on why things were they way the were and turned out the way they did. When the team had to fix everything from product to Board composition – the first thing they looked at was culture. In the grand scheme of things, he talks to podcast host Seth Adler about AI, the evolution of technology and it's affect on the future of work.

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Key Highlights

Culture upgrades and employee engagement

“We did a lot of things. We made sure people had the latest equipment: laptops, phones, so we knew what our products were. We upgraded the facilities a lot, so we made them more professional.”

“We changed the review process so people got reviewed quarterly, we changed the goal process. We did all hands meetings, we were much more open and transparent. So every Friday we had an all hands meetings with all employees and where [Marissa Mayer] and the rest of us spoke…”

AI and Automation in the workplace

“We are going through an evolution of work because there certainly is more automation. Certainly some of the jobs we've grown to know are going to change. You see a lot of the automation, particularly in retail, you see the impact on eCommerce. You have to figure out where the jobs are going to be. Whether it's machine learning, AI or whatever, robotics, a lot of the pick and pack jobs that we know are going to go away. I think the thing that's going on today, which is frankly positive, is we are raising minimum wages. So there are certain jobs, while you can be much more automated, say in restaurants and so forth, you will still have people doing some of the work.”