Yahoo appoints new chief technical officer from within

Yahoo has announced it is promoting its chief architect Raymie Stata to the post of chief technology officer.

Stata was hired in 2004 to work on Yahoo's internal organisation after it bought his research firm. Before that he spent time working on the Altavista search engine at the Digital Equipment Corporation’s Systems Research Center and has also been an assistant professor of Computer Science at the Baskin School of Engineering at UC Santa Cruz.

“As chief architect, Raymie led transformative efforts to rewire Yahoo, moving from a set of vertical silos to a horizontal platform infrastructure,” said the company in a blog posting.

“As this strong foundation is laid, we’re ready to leverage the world’s most diverse collection of content to create innovative, more personalized consumer and advertiser experiences around the globe.”

He will report to chief product officer Blake Irving and is going to be working with chief scientist Prabhakar Raghavan.

"At Yahoo there is an unfortunate culture of an unwillingness to confront hard problems, and an unwillingness to say no even when the situation clearly calls for it, and Raymie was a refreshing presence in any product design process,” one former Yahoo engineer writes on Stata's LinkedIn profile.

“He almost always has an anecdote to spice up even the most dry technical situations. I would love to work with Raymie again.”