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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

#221

Post by vacri »

WalterBright wrote: post #205
tptacek wrote: post #152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's a much more fun thing to say than "person tasked with impossible job fails to do the impossible". From the comments on this part of the thread, you'd think Yahoo was some kind of Internet colossus before Mayer took their reins, rather than an overgrown relic kept alive and profitable through sheer inertia.

Remember Apple when Jobs took it over? 90 days from bankruptcy, and written off by most people. Getting the right CEO is enormously important, and not impossible.

Outliers shouldn't be presented as typical data.

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

#222

Post by TallGuyShort »

anotherhacker wrote: post #187
henrikschroder wrote: post #180

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's not how it works. That's a terrible suggestion. If you cut perks, your best and brightest will leave much quicker, the elves leave middle earth. And then your company is essentially screwed, because you'll lose all of your key personnel. And you won't save very much money. This is the way of the bean-counters who know nothing of human motivation and morale. $1000 per employee is less than a percentage of their…

I don't believe that the "best and brightest" consider lavish parties as a deciding factor in where they work. Notice how I phrased it. It's not cost cutting. It's about investing in employees. That is something the "best and the brightest" love.

I consider myself good and bright, but I won't claim superlatives. My take? I don't care about lavish parties. But if I noticed my company going out of it's way to be cheap, there's a problem. I don't nitpick on my business expenses or my billable hours. I get my job done and I do it well, and I expect to be treated like a grown up and compensated fairly. If the company throws a party but has a complex rule about who can and cannot bring a +1 or they obviously didn't want to spend money on a party but felt obligated to go through the formalities, then the relationship has become asymmetrical and I'd rather go elsewhere than start getting picky myself.

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

#223

Post by Altay- »

nobleach wrote: post #99
legohead wrote: post #6

So 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…

These sort of comments always annoy me.

If you work at declining companies like Yahoo, HP, etc you should already consider your job lost. Just show up for the paycheck while planning your next move. This has to be what >90% of people are doing as-is. People aren't that stupid... are they?

This is CERTAINLY not the last round of layoffs at Yahoo as it positions itself for sale. Same goes for every declining business in every industry in every country in every era of business history.

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

#224

Post by henrikschroder »

cballard wrote: post #214
henrikschroder wrote: post #176

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, by most people's standards, which is why the piece is working, it creates envy in a lot of people. Same with the "free food" spiel. But Yahoo is competing for Silicon Valley software engineers, and perks are very common, so if you don't have free food, free snacks, office parties, events, and other benefits, you'll have to pay your employees a lot more. Perks are incredibly cheap for the company, because people…

Enough with the free snacks and parties. You know what I want as a perk? The company turns off at 5pm. That's it, no more work, go home, no exceptions. Company email shuts down, no access on your smartphone until 9am. Now that's a perk. I'll buy my own junk food[0], and I'll go to parties with my friends, not my coworkers. [0] or, well, I won't - another problem with the perks, I want to snack on carrots and skim gre…

> You know what I want as a perk? The company turns off at 5pm.

That's not in the interest of most companies, so you'll have to start your own if that is what you want.

> I'll go to parties with my friends

The holiday party is completely optional. Most employees didn't go.

> I want to snack on carrots and skim greek yogurt

Our snack fridges are full of that, there's more healthy snacks than unhealthy around.

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

#225

Post by prostoalex »

henrikschroder wrote: post #143
nobleach wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Seriously, if you've ever worked at a large company in SV, you should know that the "lavish parties" thing was a completely envy-driven red herring. If you do the math you realize that the holiday party cost a few hundred bucks per attending employee. Compared to other large SV companies - that are not under fire in the press - this was a cheap holiday party.

+1 to this.

You'd have a hard time arguing against a year-end party.

If the company is not doing well, it's a morale booster.

If the company is doing well, then hey, why not have a party?

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

#226

Post by existencebox »

henrikschroder wrote: post #220
existencebox wrote: post #208

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have a lot of disorganized thoughts on this issue. Please bear with me as I try to gather them together. For the sake of exposition, let's say Mayer makes some $$MM/y, the exact number isn't really important to my point past a certain level, which she most certainly is. What is she being paid that amount for? Let's explore each of the obvious options I see, and an expected common reaction (Had written logical, but…

Marissa was explicitly and publicly hired to turn around the company. She's being paid to take the personal risk of career-ending failure. It's a way for her to hedge the bet she made that she could turn the company around. This goes for all CEOs, the high salary is not compensation for labour, it's a risk premium the shareholders pay to get someone to take the job. For example, in many jurisdictions, the CEO is pers…

Sure; I accept the explicit reason, my above was just to enumerate a few of the most common ways I saw people thinking about her/any CEO's position in this sort of situation.

Your final line re: network/inflated premiums seems to agree with the broader sense of what I was saying, unless I'm misunderstanding?

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

#227

Post by GFK_of_xmaspast »

Crito wrote: post #125
adventured wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Teens are great to market to because they can get money out of their parents.

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

#228

Post by WalterBright »

vacri wrote: post #221
WalterBright wrote: post #205

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Remember Apple when Jobs took it over? 90 days from bankruptcy, and written off by most people. Getting the right CEO is enormously important, and not impossible.

Outliers shouldn't be presented as typical data.

Outliers are perfectly valid responses to claims of "impossible".

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

#229

Post by prostoalex »

tptacek wrote: post #192
anotherhacker wrote: post #188

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The figure is based upon stock options and bonuses. It's here in this picture: http://static2.businessinsider.com/image/566edfb272f2c150028...

That's still not close to 100MM/yr and it's contingent, but look, we probably all agree that Yahoo's investors didn't get their money's worth on a marquee CEO. It is, however, weird to me that everyone's so quick to blame Mayer for that. She didn't make up the game. The game stays the game. If it wasn't Mayer presiding over the decline of Yahoo --- probably still after acquiring Tumblr! --- it'd've been someone else.

> we probably all agree that Yahoo's investors didn't get their money's worth on a marquee CEO

Disagree. If you bought YHOO in mid-2012 before Marissa joined, you'd have doubled your investment by now. I understand there's the option value of having invested in some better stocks, and YHOO's correlation to BABA, but one could still do a lot worse than doubling the investment.

https://www.google.com/finance?chdnp=1&chdd=1&chds=1&chdv=1&...

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

#230

Post by henrikschroder »

YZF wrote: post #193
1024core wrote: post #144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I guess this proves that banning work-from-home didn't solve their problems. I don't know what's the big deal about that. It affected ~200 people max. Yahoo was just tightening the restrictions, bringing them in line with the rest of the Valley companies. And yet people still think that it was a big deal; it wasn't. (Source: I was there.)

Maybe it wasn't a big deal for you but it was perceived negatively overall and it hurt Yahoo's reputation (or whatever remnants of that remained at that point in time). If only 200 people were affected then it wasn't worth the backlash it created and wasn't a smart move. Anyone who was impacted by it, e.g. wasn't able to go pick up his kids or stay home for a plumber to come fix his sink, wouldn't be happy and his un…

The reason was to get rid of dead weight that was "working from home", but effectively just lifting a paycheck for doing nothing.

It did in no way impact productive employees who needed an occasional flexible schedule.

But that's not something you can tell the press, so it was spun as it was spun, and that's what people remember.

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