It seems to me that Wired missed a more important aspect of all this. Yes, having started the APM program at Google means she has lots of useful relationships. But more importantly, it means she's solved this problem before.
It's a lot easier to attract top college tech talent to a company that's already ranked #1 by some as the most desired employer for college grads. It's something else to get them to go to Yahoo, in a market where Google, Apple, Amazon, Facebook and others are all hiring.
Nope. In both cases the problem is, "this company can't attract the kind of talent it needs." The underlying issues might be different, and the solution might also be different, but the problem is the same.
The Yahoo case looks like a more difficult problem precisely because the APM was so successful. In hindsight it looks obvious. But it wasn't obvious in 2002.
