There has been a lot of write ups on the Peanut Butter Manifesto and how a Yahoo! SVP wrote an email about how the company needs to change that has leaked to the outside. An interesting approach.

While flipping around the net, I came across this blog entry from a person who left Microsoft in 1999 and did the same thing. The difference was that the Yahoo! mail is from someone with significant authority in the organization, acting as a lightning rod for change.

The Microsoft email comes off as a young man complaining. He talks about J Allard and how he wanted to work for him as he tried to change areas of Microsoft. One interesting quote:

The super rich irony about this memo is that even in pre-blog days it haunted me. J Allard did come back to the company, and I did interview to work on his team, then the Xbox team. I did not get asked to come back. I can admit that here. I was told it had something to do with my “perceived attitude.” Ouch! My memo wasn’t even in the Wall St. Journal, like this Peanut Butter one. It just goes to show…if you are going to light a bridge on fire, make sure you don’t ever intend to try and cross it again.

The burned bridge is never easy to cross again or is it that you can burn a bridge if you have the resources to build a new one? I wonder where the Yahoo! executive will end up.