Live data from Hacker News

Yahoo to cut 15 percent jobs, close several units

reuters.com

11–20 of 315 posts

Re: Yahoo to cut 15 percent jobs, close several units

#11
post #9
post #5

I feel bad for the 15%, but this was necessary. They are severely over-hired. I've gone over there a few times to talk to folks and it's clear that they have a lot of people that are basically making work for themselves because no one has any work for them that actually helps the business.

> no one has any work for them that actually helps the business. What is their business now? Having no work is a leadership problem. If there really is no work then layoffs are a must, but the company is floundering around with no real direction....

This, IMHO, is the crucial point: what exactly is Yahoo's business?

As an outside watcher I have no clue (I am also stupid). Hopefully people working there have better insight than myself.

Re: Yahoo to cut 15 percent jobs, close several units

#13
post #11
post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> no one has any work for them that actually helps the business. What is their business now? Having no work is a leadership problem. If there really is no work then layoffs are a must, but the company is floundering around with no real direction....

This, IMHO, is the crucial point: what exactly is Yahoo's business? As an outside watcher I have no clue (I am also stupid). Hopefully people working there have better insight than myself.

Well they get a lot of non-Asian revenue still so it comes from somewhere.

Re: Yahoo to cut 15 percent jobs, close several units

#14
> Ms. Mayer is expected to announce greater focus on Project Index, an internal project to build a better search engine tailored to mobile phones, said a person familiar with the matter. The company has posted listings for at least 190 jobs on its website this month, the vast majority of which are for engineers.

1. I am eager to find out why it is tailored to mobile phone and what capacity the engine would give to a mobile phone. A search engine should work on both desktop and on the go.

2. Did job research with Yahoo a couple years ago, so I am not sure how much it is true today and whether my observation is correct or not from their hiring standpoint. But I know in the past, half of the Yahoo hiring post dates were at least 6-12 months ago, which indicated either the company was struggling to find and acquire talents, or someone simply never bothered to cancel the request and the team responsible for managing the hiring posts never bothered to check with the requester regularly. Either way, it was bad for a job seeker to see a company fail to remove job posting from months ago.

IMO, if you are still hiring the same title for multiple job filling, submit a new one and put a new date.

Re: Yahoo to cut 15 percent jobs, close several units

#16
post #12

Doesn't Yahoo go on hiring sprees all the time?

Almost every major tech company is always hiring. But the process of ACTUALLY HIRING is a different story. Some company does it quick, even if there's a layoff. Some company takes forever to complete interview and paper work even if there is no layoff. And then there are companies doing layoff and new hiring goes through strict budget reviews. It depends. Furthermore, you can close a whole useless business project and you decide to invest in another project so you need to hire people. It's quite interesting that in the latter case some company prefers to fire everyone and hire back some of them. I have seen that before.

Re: Yahoo to cut 15 percent jobs, close several units

#17
post #11
post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> no one has any work for them that actually helps the business. What is their business now? Having no work is a leadership problem. If there really is no work then layoffs are a must, but the company is floundering around with no real direction....

This, IMHO, is the crucial point: what exactly is Yahoo's business? As an outside watcher I have no clue (I am also stupid). Hopefully people working there have better insight than myself.

> This, IMHO, is the crucial point: what exactly is Yahoo's business?

Keeping the C-levels employed?

Re: Yahoo to cut 15 percent jobs, close several units

#18
post #11
post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> no one has any work for them that actually helps the business. What is their business now? Having no work is a leadership problem. If there really is no work then layoffs are a must, but the company is floundering around with no real direction....

This, IMHO, is the crucial point: what exactly is Yahoo's business? As an outside watcher I have no clue (I am also stupid). Hopefully people working there have better insight than myself.

They keep calling themselves a "media company", but they've done such a terrible job at delivery (of media and vision) that it wouldn't surprise me if most people working there don't even know what the company is about.

Recently I tried watching Yahoo's Other Space (https://screen.yahoo.com/other-space/), but gave up after a few episodes - even though I enjoyed what I was able to watch. From what I could tell, the show wasn't available through the Yahoo Screen mobile app. (Which brings another question, WTF is the point of that app?!) The website lets you watch streaming video, but the site is impossible to use from mobile, and it would randomly crash every iOS browser I tried (Safari, Chrome, Firefox). When I tried watching from a desktop the video stream would occasionally freeze, and the Ads would randomly reset the stream back to the beginning of the episode.

Re: Yahoo to cut 15 percent jobs, close several units

#19
post #14

> Ms. Mayer is expected to announce greater focus on Project Index, an internal project to build a better search engine tailored to mobile phones, said a person familiar with the matter. The company has posted listings for at least 190 jobs on its website this month, the vast majority of which are for engineers. 1. I am eager to find out why it is tailored to mobile phone and what capacity the engine would give to a…

There are still plenty of sites that are unusable on a mobile phone, so that's one consideration.

Re: Yahoo to cut 15 percent jobs, close several units

#20
post #8

I don't really get what these abbreviations and commas in the titles are all about. It saves 3 characters over "Yahoo to cut 15% of jobs and close several units". Maybe allow for more Twitter hashtags?

They might be trying to have unique headlines so it’s easier to trace companies that directly copy content.
Post reply on HN