Jerry Yang Steps Down as Yahoo CEO

Harry Mok
November 17, 2008

Yang is one of the most high-profile Asian American chief executives in the country, and one of the great stories of the Internet boom. Yahoo started as a set of links to Yang and company co-founder David Filo's favorite sites on the Internet. Yahoo grew to be one of the juggernauts of the Internet, but recently has fallen on hard times. Yang had the misfortune of being in charge during an awful time for the company, as the Merc story says.

There aren't that many big corporations with Asian American CEOs, and it's unfortunate that Yang's tenure will be considered a failure by many. If there's a glass ceiling, I hope Yang's time at Yahoo doesn't discourage other companies from considering Asian Americans for executive positions.

Categories: 
Columns
News and Politics
Contributor: 

Harry Mok

Editor in chief

Editor in Chief Harry Mok wrote about growing up on a Chinese vegetable farm for the second issue of Hyphen and has been a volunteer editor since 2004. As a board member of the San Francisco and New York chapters of the Asian American Journalists Association, Harry has recruited and organized events for student members. He holds a master’s degree in journalism from the University of California, Berkeley, where he was also a graduate student instructor in the Asian American Studies Department.

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Comments

Comments

callipygian wrote on Tue, 11/18/2008 - 10:21am
he did make some huge business mistakes though. true, it's some hard times, but come on... rejecting M$ for Google, then crawling back to M$ when Google rejects you, and then get rejected again, and then decides to quit while ship is sinking. no matter how you look at it, that's just bad leadership. and don't get me started on the chinese decedent thing. usually people gain "honor" points for giving up money, or vice versa, but i just feel bad for him now he got neither. though, he's still filthy rich, and made his mark on history, nobody can take that away from him.
Anonymous wrote on Wed, 11/19/2008 - 3:36pm
dissidents...anyways, it just goes to show, there's no heart in business man. yahoo was getting way too big, slow, and old anyways. they need a rebirth...the sooner the better.