IAC Reviews

Senior management. The co-CEOs, I believe, want to foster a culture of accountability but it devolves into a culture of blame. Meetings with them would be held with the intention of public shaming instead of group problem solving. Poisonous culture where individuals don't feel protected. Only those individuals willing to take undeserved credit and blame others for mistakes thrive. Recently, a new CFO has been installed that fit that mode. The CFO is a perfect example of senior management style at IACA. Poor management skills, blames other for his deficiencies, engages in activities that generates limited values, and very low EQ. That hire alone is responsible for the departure of several individuals include the team he inherited.

IAC does not have a leader figure with a passionate founder spirit like Google's Sergey Page and Larry Brin, Facebook's Mark Zuckerberg or Yahoo's Jerry Yang. The IAC head, Barry Diller, sits far away from "the action" in New York, does not understand the Internet industry very well with his TV background, and is more concerned about his own wealth than anything else. He was the 3rd-highest paid American CEO in 2007, took home $300 million, all the while IAC stock was tanking throughout the entire year. Forbes gives him an efficiency rating of 177 on a 1-189 scale (189 being worst) and the NY Times crowned him America’s Laziest Man. Unfortunately, this has consequences down to the rank and file. You will suffer from erratic and impatient decisions, lack of resources where they are needed the most and lack of a coherent strategy for the various parts of IAC, which includes Ask.com, Evite, Match.com, Citysearch, the notorious Fun Web Products and others. (FunWebProducts with Zwinky, Smiley Central etc. is often labeled as spyware from stuffing bundled toolbars onto people's computers that they didn't ask for) It's a very top-heavy organization with lots of generals and few soldiers. That new Ask top management comes across as secretive and secluded. Since IAC is a conglomerate of bought companies, there are locations and employees scattered all over the place. And I don't mean strategically based branch offices, I mean small teams or even individuals working from home in random far-flung states and different time zones making meetings and information exchange difficult. The new Ask.com leadership introduced a new org structure with two competing arms, one to increase query volume, the other to increase revenue per query. It creates a lot of friction between the teams because the ways to achieve their respective goals often conflict. Along with the change in focus for Ask, away from Internet innovator more towards a question/answer site for housewives, employee moral is low and several key people left the company even after a big round of layoffs in March.