Article primarily references information from the WSJ article, but WSJ now has a super-paywall and the "web" trick no longer works.
WSJ's paywall update - https://digiday.com/publishers/wall-street-journal-paywall-g...
Yahoo to cut 15 percent jobs, close several units
121–130 of 315 posts
Re: Yahoo to cut 15 percent jobs, close several units
#122So I guess she did mean something when she said, "No layoffs...this week" [1] Brutal. [1] http://nypost.com/2016/01/18/marissa-mayers-job-safety-joke-...
It's incredibly sad when something like this happens. And I sure hope anyone who's found themselves out of a job, success in finding another. Even the "lower performers" still need to work. What I do hope for Yahoo, is that they're taking a solid look at who they consider expendable. Are self-important big shots also losing their jobs? Or are they too important to fire? When I see any company start to get rid of thei…
>As for Melissa, I wonder how easy it'll be for her to find a job.
There are only so many logo tweaking jobs.
Re: Yahoo to cut 15 percent jobs, close several units
#123Earlier quoted context omitted.
This is one of those things that folks learn over time. I've met masters of the "busy people" who, with no direction whatsoever from above have full meeting schedules, generating reports and presentations and white papers and generally "working hard" but it is all just running on a treadmill as far as I can tell. They are exercising their "execution" habits while waiting for something to actually do. It sort of amaze…
>all just running on a treadmill as far as I can tell. Unfortunately, people lose their minds when some company announces layoffs, like some purposeful social harm is being done, yet somehow when a company is having massive hiring no one really questions how much of that is valid or sustainable. People become like you describe; they master the do nothing job via office cult cargoism. It must be exhausting to have a '…
Hi, throwaway with a "fake" job (with quotations because usually 25% of the time I am busy).
It is incredibly frustrating to me, because I consider myself a creative and capable individual, who is just fresh off graduation. However, I have a micromanaging, closed-minded rude boss (company lingo: "Leader"), who I prefer to avoid at all costs. At the same time, he seems completely aloof and uninterested in my career goals, which explains why I have nothing to do most of the time.
This is further led to absurdity because I'm in a Trainee position, someone who is paid a better than everyone else at their level of responsibility and gone through extra training with hopes they will ascend to management. I get no training either.
I've been looking for another job for over a year and cannot get anything else because of lack of experience and a nation-wide political+economical crisis.
Re: Yahoo to cut 15 percent jobs, close several units
#124Earlier quoted context omitted.
No, they're going to kill Yahoo because it deserves to die; a company not making money doesn't really have a reason for existence, does it? (Or it should become a charity instead.)
I think there is some value in providing jobs to 10,000 people (currently more, soon a little less) even if there's no extra profit for shareholders on top of that. Maybe these kinds of companies should just be given to employees for free and run as a co-op instead of getting shut down.
Wut? There are charities, and there are businesses. If you expect Yahoo to be run as a charity, why should Yahoo's owners be the ones who must provide this?
Put it another way. Let's say you had 100k that you were able to invest in your own startup. After a number of years, you found that you could support 5 employees at your startup, but you weren't, and had no hope of, being profitable - there was no "extra profit" for you. Would you be willing to just turn over your investment as charity to your employees?
Re: Yahoo to cut 15 percent jobs, close several units
#125What about Tumblr ? Is that thing still on? was it worth the bazillion dollars they spent on the aquisition. Also a long time ago, Yahoo made Mark Cuban a billionaire. What happened to the technology they acquired from his company?
Tumblr remains a top 50 US site, so yeah it's still on. Was it worth it? I don't see any meaningful competitors to them. Nobody has come along to knock them off. The $1.1 billion price was obviously steep for a blog service. So long as the traffic remains, they have some shot at turning it into a sustainable business. It's realistically worth 10% to 20% of what they paid for it though.
Tumblr has a problem of demographics which makes it difficult for Yahoo to make money off of it. A very large segment of their users are teenagers, and another large segment do little other than post pornography.
Re: Yahoo to cut 15 percent jobs, close several units
#126So I guess she did mean something when she said, "No layoffs...this week" [1] Brutal. [1] http://nypost.com/2016/01/18/marissa-mayers-job-safety-joke-...
It's incredibly sad when something like this happens. And I sure hope anyone who's found themselves out of a job, success in finding another. Even the "lower performers" still need to work. What I do hope for Yahoo, is that they're taking a solid look at who they consider expendable. Are self-important big shots also losing their jobs? Or are they too important to fire? When I see any company start to get rid of thei…
Technology eating technology.
It's only a "surprise" for a society that does not yet understand to what degree technology is about to create power monopolies of unseen magnitude.
In principle, Google could become the Internet.
Oh wait...
Re: Yahoo to cut 15 percent jobs, close several units
#127At the dawn of the Internet Yahoo held the Internet's home page, there were so few sites and Search Engines were so primitive that I remember using Yahoo Directory to find websites and for many years `ping yahoo.com` was my magic command to tell whether my modem had an Internet connection. My first Internet account and online alias was at Yahoo, I used mail and their personalized home page every day...
But then started their decades long decay, whilst the Internet boomed the Yahoo directory became old and static, I moved to searching on Google pretty quickly and jumped when gmail was released with it's unprecedented 1GB of free space. Around the same time my Yahoo mail became my junk account, my personalized Yahoo home page started bit rotting, my Internet connectivity command became `ping google.com` and I never went back to searching on Yahoo. They also jacked up prices of Yahoo domains by 300-400%, violating existing customers trust and prompted me to go shopping for a new service provider pretty quickly.
Although I've been disconnected from all things Yahoo, I imagine it's been operating in its own niche corner of the Internet, I'm told Yahoo mail has hundreds of million users (my Junk account likely counted), I'd be interested in the number of active accounts and their demographics, my guess goes to an aging population. It's now been years since I heard anything positive coming out of Yahoo, they've hit the news with MS's failed acquisition, switching search engines and CEO churn - but otherwise I can't recall anything new coming from Yahoo that wasn't M&A.
They seem like a draconian company holding onto legacy labor-intensive degrading assets which happens to be sitting on a gold mine with their Alibaba investment. I don't see how the current structure is capable of re-inventing itself so stream-lining their existing operations and trimming off dead-weight and losses seems like the only way forward. If they ever have a chance to becoming a tech force again they need new blood and talent pretty quickly. Fortunately they have the resources to make something but I only see it coming from outside of Yahoo, if I was them I would look at using their resources funding young, talented and innovative startups that aligns with their growth and business interests, e.g. they could mandate all ad-supported startups must use Yahoo Ads. Even with all the Talent Google has, many of their most valuable assets like Android and YouTube came from acquisitions. With Yahoo's brain drain I suspect that's going to be the only way we're going to see a resurgence from them.
Re: Yahoo to cut 15 percent jobs, close several units
#128Earlier quoted context omitted.
No, they're going to kill Yahoo because it deserves to die; a company not making money doesn't really have a reason for existence, does it? (Or it should become a charity instead.)
I think there is some value in providing jobs to 10,000 people (currently more, soon a little less) even if there's no extra profit for shareholders on top of that. Maybe these kinds of companies should just be given to employees for free and run as a co-op instead of getting shut down.
Ha. This is precious.
Re: Yahoo to cut 15 percent jobs, close several units
#129So I guess she did mean something when she said, "No layoffs...this week" [1] Brutal. [1] http://nypost.com/2016/01/18/marissa-mayers-job-safety-joke-...
fuck mayer
Re: Yahoo to cut 15 percent jobs, close several units
#130Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'm not sure what definition of "better" would apply but I'm certain there is a non-zero number of people who would prefer to see yahoo slowly die while paying the last of its money out to workers.
companies are for shareholders, not workers
That's one philosophy. The philosophy of my company is that the management team has an ethical responsibility to consider the interests of employees in strategic decision making. I am certain this is the only way to build a healthy long-lived tech company.