I'd guess that Yahoo has some talented people and some deadweight, but that seems obvious. No idea what the proportions are.
How would you fix the problem?
Abstractly, I support the idea of firing the untalented, lazy, or parasitic people who drain the company. In practice, very few companies can execute this, because figuring out who those people are, without the process getting corrupted and political, is a rarely accomplished feat. Project-by-project layoffs, while more unfair, I think are often better than most "low performer initiatives" that devolve into witch hunts.
Certainly, if she implements Google's HR/performance review process, she'll only make the company worse and probably kill it.
The overall impression seems to be that "The Elves Left Middle Earth" several years ago, and Yahoo today is primarily C-players. Different people will have different opinions, this is simply the result of my gathered impressions.
Now, Marissa Mayer is heavily involved with new hiring at Yahoo[1]. While this isn't a silver bullet, it probably raises their hiring process from ~10th percentile to ~30th percentile (numbers not exact.)
Combine those two and that means that the average new hire is better than the average old employee. So randomly firing old employees and hiring new ones is actually a +EV bet.
This is an incredibly rare situation! But when you consider the sheer insanity of the circumstances Mayer is working against, I actually believe that most of her decisions have been correct.
I think a successful strategy could look something like this: First, fire a bunch of people to free up some money. Next, hire some upper level management from Google (or Facebook, Apple, wherever) and give them the authority to build new organizations within Yahoo using either existing Yahoo employees or by hiring people away from other companies in the valley. Sell the opportunity to work at "the new yahoo" under manager X (who was recently hired and presumably has some name recognition) that is insulated from "the old yahoo" and all its crappy culture of politics and underachievement.
How would you fix the problem?
Abstractly, I support the idea of firing the untalented, lazy, or parasitic people who drain the company. In practice, very few companies can execute this, because figuring out who those people are, without the process getting corrupted and political, is a rarely accomplished feat. Project-by-project layoffs, while more unfair, I think are often better than most "low performer initiatives" that devolve into witch hunts.
Certainly, if she implements Google's HR/performance review process, she'll only make the company worse and probably kill it.