Comments on: Exclusive: Yahoo launching Hadoop spinoff this week

By: Rob's Slave

Rob's Slave — Sat, 02 Jul 2011 02:49:55 +0000

The yahoo engineers have no idea what they’re getting themselves into with Rob Bearden in the company. Rob doesn’t think twice about firing people, he is *ruthless*. Rob is known to be a mercenary for VCs, his job is to come in, clean up house, then achieve the quickest buck possible via selling the company to an acquirer. He doesn’t build long-lasting companies, it is all about the quick flip for him. SpringSource was sold to VMware for $420M, they had a much higher potential than that. Similarly, JBoss was sold to RedHat for $350M.

By: Anonymous Source

Anonymous Source — Fri, 01 Jul 2011 04:42:19 +0000

Another rumor that I heard is the Benchmark/Yahoo deal was going to breakdown at the 11th because Eric14 threw a tantrum after Benchmark told him that Rob Bearden was going to be the CEO. Eric threatened to cause the whole deal to fall apart if he wasn’t the CEO, so Rob Bearden had to yield that title and instead went with President/COO. This further demonstrates E14′s selfishness, he was willing to sacrifice the whole deal breaking down for his ego.

By: Eric14 Employee

Eric14 Employee — Thu, 30 Jun 2011 17:14:46 +0000

Eric14 had 100 employees in his Hadoop organization at Yahoo, of the 100 he only *picked* around 23 to join HortonWorks. I am among the employees who were not picked and I can tell you that we are all incredibly *demoralized* by this, we feel betrayed and abandoned.

Hadoop was the only shining technology project within Yahoo for smart engineers who want to work on cool technology. Raymie Stata (Yahoo’s CTO) for many years said that this is one of the main reasons why Yahoo believed in the Hadoop open source strategy, to continue to attract smart engineers. But now, seeing that Eric14 *abandoned* us, and given that Hadoop isn’t here any more, I plan to leave within the next 4 weeks. I plan to join the EMC/Greenplum Hadoop team (their recruiters have been pinging me every day for last couple of months) and I pledge to give Eric14 a real run for his life, he betrayed us.

Yahoo was incredibly stupid to just follow Eric’s whim on this. Rumor has it that he put a gun to Carol Bartz head, told management that they need to fund this new company or he will just take off and take all the smart engineers and leave. I am starting to agree with other commenters on this thread, Eric14 will throw anybody under the bus (even his own kids) to get ahead.

By: CustomerOfEric14

CustomerOfEric14 — Thu, 30 Jun 2011 08:12:55 +0000

I agree, and I bet that Eric14 will be replaced as CEO within 3 months, if not kicked out next week. I was an internal customer at Yahoo for the services that Eric14′s Hadoop team provided. They do *not* know how to treat customers, they treated us like shit and bossed us around. They thought that Hadoop is what the world revolved around and totally forgot that it is in service of Yahoo’s primary business. They kept bossing us around and telling us what to do instead of trying to solve our business needs. I am so glad they are out of Yahoo now in a vendor like relationship, because frankly if they don’t cleanup their act and start doing what we are asking for then we will stop paying them and take our business some where else. We are finally free from their tyranny and arrogance (the entire batch was super arrogant, not just Eric14). Yahoo’s core business is way more important than our ownership in this tiny business (our stock price actually kept dropping last few days, which shows that Yahoo’s ownership in Horton isn’t worth shit).

By: Yahoo Employee

Yahoo Employee — Wed, 29 Jun 2011 02:45:23 +0000

Yes, he is the CEO, it is on management page of their website (www.hortonworks.com). I concur with Yahoo Alumn since I actually reported directly to Eric14 and can testify that he is a ungrateful power hungry control freak who will burn anybody in his way to get ahead. His ego is so inflated even Hadoop can’t store it. Yahoo is so fortunate to have him out of there.

By: reportedtoe14

reportedtoe14 — Tue, 28 Jun 2011 23:32:38 +0000

E14 is CEO. This is already doomed. He is only fit for Jailer

By: Greg

Greg — Tue, 28 Jun 2011 21:24:18 +0000

I disagree. Cloudera support is outrageously expensive. I little competition will hopefully bring the cost down and benefit the users.

By: Derrick Harris

Derrick Harris — Tue, 28 Jun 2011 20:33:56 +0000

Indeed, it does:

Registrant:
Domain Administrator
Yahoo! Inc.
701 First Avenue
Sunnyvale CA 94089
…

Domain Name: hortonworks.com

By: Derrick Harris

Derrick Harris — Tue, 28 Jun 2011 20:31:45 +0000

Is he the rumored CEO? I didn’t ask, but he does seem like a logical choice given his current role. I don’t know Eric, though, so I can’t comment on your personality concerns.

By: Yahoo Alumn

Yahoo Alumn — Tue, 28 Jun 2011 19:26:33 +0000

I worked at Yahoo for many years, and I can say without doubt that this company is doomed to failure if Eric Baldeschwieler (aka E14) is indeed the CEO. He is one of the most selfish/egocentric people I have ever met, all he cares about is himself, himself, then himself. He is also extremely emotional and throws temper tantrums all the time. I have no doubt that Benchmark will detect this rather quickly and replace him as CEO.