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Yahoo to cut 15 percent jobs, close several units

reuters.com

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

#21

Post by yeukhon »

Retric wrote: post #19
yeukhon wrote: 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.

Did you mean going over to another site? Because major search engines like google, yahoo and bing have their own app for major mobile OSes. Unless you want to render other sites within your app, that's a whole different story. I am under the impression they want to incorporate Yahoo News Digest (pretty much an update from the expensive Summly acquisition) into the search experience.

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

#23

Post by phamilton »

jedberg wrote: 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.

Depends on the severence package. 6 months of salary when it doesn't take 6 months to find a new job isn't a bad deal.

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

#24

Post by random42 »

yeukhon wrote: post #16
xyzzy4 wrote: 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 an…

> 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.

I wonder why they'd do it, instead of an internal transfer. Any idea why?

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

#25

Post by enjo »

jobu wrote: post #18
pgz wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I love the show Community. I watched like three episodes of the new season and stopped. The weekly release model is just dumb. They made it nearly impossible to watch via Chromecast as well. At some point I lost interest in getting past their obstacles and just stopped watching.

Yahoo reminds me of Apple in the mid 90's. Even good ideas are just terribly executed. They hired the wrong leader to try and fix their problems.

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

#26

Post by DiversityinSV »

phamilton wrote: post #23
jedberg wrote: 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.

Depends on the severence package. 6 months of salary when it doesn't take 6 months to find a new job isn't a bad deal.

Depends on what you do...it could take more than 6 months, and try being income-less in SV for a few months

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

#27

Post by GFK_of_xmaspast »

random42 wrote: post #24
yeukhon wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 an…

> 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. I wonder why they'd do it, instead of an internal transfer. Any idea why?

Keeps labor from getting too comfortable.

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

#29

Post by Zigurd »

ProAm wrote: post #9
jedberg wrote: 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....

"Having no work is a leadership problem."

Oh man is that true, especially in the case of a supposed Internet ecosystem that's got issues with keeping properties up to date and coherent. Surely some of these properties have product managers that have not fallen asleep, and who are in tune with how to keep their products relevant, who have features they want to implement.

Being "overstaffed" in an environment full of poachers means your C-suite hasn't got a plan, or even remained connected with product management to make small-ball plans. They may find that renovating their slummy properties doesn't pay off. But this smells more like cleaning up the results of senior management lackadaisy than a purposeful trimming.

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

#30

Post by frozenport »

random42 wrote: post #24
yeukhon wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 an…

> 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. I wonder why they'd do it, instead of an internal transfer. Any idea why?

Lower pay.
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