Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Yahoo planning 10% layoffs as early as this month, report says

bizjournals.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

111–120 of 140 posts

Re: Yahoo planning 10% layoffs as early as this month, report says

#111

Post by sillysaurus3 »

TheLogothete wrote: post #103
sillysaurus3 wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Haha. Perhaps this exchange will be able to explain some things to some people, after I really say what I'm going to be saying. It's such a perfect illustration of the entire life, start to finish, like a waking nightmare. Goodbye.

Or perhaps you shouldn't be so arrogant and dismiss everyone else's problems so readily. "I have suffered infinitely more than you could ever comprehend". Vanity is definitely Devil's favorite sin, and it lurks in the strangest of places. Goodbye to you too.

I didn't say you didn't go through harsh things. I apologize if that's how it felt. I'd probably have reacted the same way; sorry. I'm glad you got through it, honestly.

The world can make you feel so worn. There's sometimes just no chance left.

Re: Yahoo planning 10% layoffs as early as this month, report says

#112

Post by [deleted] »

negamax wrote: post #92
sremani wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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".

She's making more than Tim Cook? No way

[deleted]

Re: Yahoo planning 10% layoffs as early as this month, report says

#113

Post by [deleted] »

jacquesm wrote: post #101
sillysaurus3 wrote: post #20

Earlier 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…

> My family was totally broken, like one hundred percent shattered. Mine was too. > There is no chance I'll be a job creator, no matter how driven. That need not be the case, all it takes is a lucky break, worked for me.

[deleted]

Re: Yahoo planning 10% layoffs as early as this month, report says

#114

Post by jacquesm »

[deleted] wrote: post #113
jacquesm wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> My family was totally broken, like one hundred percent shattered. Mine was too. > There is no chance I'll be a job creator, no matter how driven. That need not be the case, all it takes is a lucky break, worked for me.

[deleted]

Anything I can do for you you know where to find me. And please do keep caring, don't worry about 'social errors'. And note my change of email address (jacques@mattheij.com).

Re: Yahoo planning 10% layoffs as early as this month, report says

#115

Post by notacoward »

jevgeni wrote: post #79
notacoward wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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, obvious…

I remember seeing a 1970s video from the Soviet Union about a piece of software some soviet scientists developed that could automatically retouch and restore photographs. Like at Adobe Photoshop CC level. What impact did it have? Zero. Because some technocrat apparatchik decided it wasn't worth it developing and promoting the thing further. One can have insane ability to create things, but it will be ultimately futil…

One can have the ability to play middleman, but it will be ultimately futile, if there's nothing to play middleman for. Getting things to consumers first requires that there be a thing, which requires a creative act. Investors and executives can certainly help to facilitate those creative acts, but why should that give them first claim to 99% of the proceeds? It's certainly not a risk premium when those people glide away while the creators get screwed. It's pure rent, in the economics sense.

Re: Yahoo planning 10% layoffs as early as this month, report says

#116

Post by interesting_att »

spacecowboy_lon wrote: post #104
sremani wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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".

But would the have take such a high risk job? its noticeable that risky senior jobs have more Women and BME in post - as under represented groups they feel that they have to take more risks to break thorough the glass ceiling.

How is being the CEO of Yahoo and getting paid 100m+ 'high risk?'

Her presence is now well known. She can work anywhere, and doesn't ever need to work again.

Re: Yahoo planning 10% layoffs as early as this month, report says

#117

Post by lmm »

w1ntermute wrote: post #12
Esau wrote: post #9

Don't worry people; I am sure the CEO will be okay.

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…

> 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 optimize products that already have their flywheels spinning

I could easily imagine that putting someone in the top 20% of managers.

Re: Yahoo planning 10% layoffs as early as this month, report says

#119

Post by codyguy »

ugh123 wrote: post #84
codyguy wrote: post #80

They could have been serious contender in semantic search. I remember trying to reach out to some yahoos regarding an ambitious, yet serious proposal on semantic search using ThatNeedle.com. we could have made an impact. I could not get to the right audience even for a demo or a proposal. I guess they have too many silos built on top of an ivory tower. Nonetheless, it would be sad to see them fade away.

You mean you tried to peddle your startup (for acquisition likely) to them and you couldn't get your foot in the door? And that could have made them a "contender"? Please

outsourcing search to Bing certainly didn't help. Not sure they had much to lose in search.

Re: Yahoo planning 10% layoffs as early as this month, report says

#120

Post by mkohlmyr »

w1ntermute wrote: post #55
andrewvc wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> That being said, if you ARE going to judge her by contemporary CEO standards, the question is, would anyone else have done better? The first mistake the Yahoo board made was to decide that product innovation would save them. In reality, they should've brought in an ex-consultant or ex-banker who could chop off pieces of the business and sell them to the highest bidder (essentially, what's going to happen now). The…

I think the brand and portal "product" could have been saved, but I agree the brand and portal could not save the current corporate entity.

The brand and portal is a much smaller company than Yahoo of today and probably the current spin off should have been the original model along with some very heavy layoffs.

My thoughts on saving the portal product, personally were always

- Buy tumblr for ad sales potential - Buy digg.com and some smaller facebook page style properties to drive traffic and seo to news - Buy inside.com and essentially make that yahoo news. - Produce high quality streaming video news content, particularly finance. - Buy libsyn or podbay. With existing ad data yahoo could do targeted in-audio ads for streaming and download. - Double down on fantasy sports as a driver of daily visits. - Rebuild mail. Use it as a daily visits driver / cross promotion opportunity with minimal or no ads. - Spin flickr off to employees or sell it.

Post reply on HN