A society that has no saftey net except for the lucky and rather dumb 1%ers is one that will fall apart, sooner or later. Or experience radical disruption.
Yahoo planning 10% layoffs as early as this month, report says
31–40 of 140 posts
Re: Yahoo planning 10% layoffs as early as this month, report says
#32Earlier quoted context omitted.
Why? Releasing the workforce from an unproductive company is exactly what society needs. The opposite is zombie companies.
Perhaps Yahoo should have been split into smaller companies sooner. With better management, Flickr could have been Instagram.
I've been preparing to try to make an offer for Flickr in the event it goes up for sale (separate from the rest of the web business), organizing it as a benefit corp to be a long term business not to be put up for sale. It shouldn't be an Instagram. Its not a social network. Its a photo site that helps you organize/keep your photos, as well as share them (there's a difference).
Just bidding my time, ear to the ground.
Re: Yahoo planning 10% layoffs as early as this month, report says
#33Earlier quoted context omitted.
Mayer will be walking away with a $158M golden parachute[0], and will undoubtedly have another nice executive position lined up in no time. It's amazing how much respect she's garnered in the tech community. From all the public info on her, she doesn't seem to have much product vision - rather, she's just a manager who's good at making data-driven decisions (the infamous "41 shades of blue"[1]) to incrementally optim…
I agree and disagree with your point. It's incredibly hard to determine how much good a new CEO has done, and how much is inertia. I think that's a strong argument against the incredibly high CEO pay in contemporary companies, it dramatically underestimates the importance of the work of the rank and file. That being said, if you ARE going to judge her by contemporary CEO standards, the question is, would anyone else…
If no one could have gotten better results, I can think of many capable people who could have gotten similar results for a lot cheap. Yahoo! is almost paying MM $400 million and the $110 million exec who stayed about 11 months she fired. For all the Meritocracy talk about general foot soldiers, the SV execs seem to get a lot of "Participation Trophies".
Re: Yahoo planning 10% layoffs as early as this month, report says
#34Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yeah, all the "wealth creators" at the top will do fine. It's only the people who did the work and made the stuff who will be laid off. Their fault for not cultivating the right connections.
> It's only the people who did the work and made the stuff who will be laid off. Well... what do you expect? You're either the job creator or the job filler. If you could create jobs and had the right motivation and ability to do so, you wouldn't be filling a job. > Their fault for not cultivating the right connections. And yes, knowing the right people is part of that game. And yes, sometimes the job creators must d…
Is this poe's law?
Re: Yahoo planning 10% layoffs as early as this month, report says
#35Yahoo needs to kill off half of their products and just focus on four things:
* news (finance & sports)
* Search & Portal (that's where they make $$$)
* YMail (because there are still millions of users)
* fantasy sports and extend it.
Spin off Tumblr and Flickr into a startup focus on content and high-quality photo source (TBH there is very little quality content on Tumblr and the attraction / hype is gone - speaking from user after five years of using Tumblr), and other applications should be killed, including their article reading mobile app, Developer network, and the newly resurrected Y! Messenger.
BTW, Yahoo is one of the most generous companies out there paying security bounty (good and bad for too many submissions :] )
Re: Yahoo planning 10% layoffs as early as this month, report says
#36Earlier quoted context omitted.
You're either the job creator or the job filler. Please explain to me which one of those labels best applies to the executive team at Yahoo.
> Please explain to me which one of those labels best applies to the executive team at Yahoo Clearly the former. In 2012 Yahoo had 11,700 employees, and by 2014 they had 12,500 employees.[1] The 10% layoff is going to be around the difference there (so net zero), but I don't think any reasonable person could argue not cutting jobs in this situation would result in a net gain for Yahoo. It's a company in trouble, and…
Agree, probably just a response to the market, and doesn't actually yield any substantial gain except cutting a 20-30M a year.
Re: Yahoo planning 10% layoffs as early as this month, report says
#37Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yeah, all the "wealth creators" at the top will do fine. It's only the people who did the work and made the stuff who will be laid off. Their fault for not cultivating the right connections.
> It's only the people who did the work and made the stuff who will be laid off. Well... what do you expect? You're either the job creator or the job filler. If you could create jobs and had the right motivation and ability to do so, you wouldn't be filling a job. > Their fault for not cultivating the right connections. And yes, knowing the right people is part of that game. And yes, sometimes the job creators must d…
> You're either the job creator or the job filler.
That's a very simplistic view. Doing the work and making the stuff also create jobs. How many right here have jobs because developers - not execs, not investors - created the technology we use? Yes, even at Yahoo. Like Hadoop. The idea that the people who contribute money create jobs and the people who contribute labor (in our case via code) don't is utterly, obviously, dangerously wrong. It's self-serving claptrap from those who have no ability to participate in acts of creation instead of arbitrage. No hacker for which this site is named should accept it.
Re: Yahoo planning 10% layoffs as early as this month, report says
#38Earlier quoted context omitted.
If you could create jobs and had the right motivation and ability to do so, you wouldn't be filling a job. Haha... I'm happy you believe this. No sarcasm; it just made me wish that I still did. In this world, merit is judged by more than ability. Motive, if not aimed perfectly, is a burden that will decrease your chances, not increase them. Background is so important. My family was totally broken, like one hundred pe…
There are many counter examples to your anecdote. Larry Ellison comes to mind, but there are others (in fact, most of our most successful people come from very broken backgrounds). It's what you do with that drive/anger/passion/frustration/motivation/defiance that counts. It takes a lot of risk, and guts to strike out and create jobs - and more often than not it doesn't work out... but that's all part of the game. It…
The 'broken background' anecdote sounds nice, but the majority (>50%) of the forbes 400 these days comes from upper middle class backgrounds. These kids are the majority at elite schools which are feeders for the best career opportunities.
Re: Yahoo planning 10% layoffs as early as this month, report says
#39Earlier quoted context omitted.
> It's only the people who did the work and made the stuff who will be laid off. Well... what do you expect? You're either the job creator or the job filler. If you could create jobs and had the right motivation and ability to do so, you wouldn't be filling a job. > Their fault for not cultivating the right connections. And yes, knowing the right people is part of that game. And yes, sometimes the job creators must d…
If you could create jobs and had the right motivation and ability to do so, you wouldn't be filling a job. Haha... I'm happy you believe this. No sarcasm; it just made me wish that I still did. In this world, merit is judged by more than ability. Motive, if not aimed perfectly, is a burden that will decrease your chances, not increase them. Background is so important. My family was totally broken, like one hundred pe…
Resonance. I can see / understand this. I hope to not limit serendipity though, and the same for your case too. In the end, it's all a chasing of the wind.
Re: Yahoo planning 10% layoffs as early as this month, report says
#40Earlier quoted context omitted.
I think the question is not if CEO is good, but if CEO is worth her/his salary.
Hmm, I would think salary would be one of the smaller considerations when choosing a CEO at that level. It's generally going to be a drop in the budget compared to annual revenue. A negotiation point for sure, but more of a side show to other concerns.
158 million is never a drop in the bucket.
Just because a company is worth billions doesn't mean they are willing to throw away millions. There are still lawyers out there looking to bring derivative actions.