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Yahoo to Let 140 Employees Go

bits.blogs.nytimes.com

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Re: Yahoo to Let 140 Employees Go

#11

Post by Isofarro »

lionhearted wrote: post #7

> The reduction comes a month after the Web portal let around 600 workers go as part of a strategy by Carol A. Bartz, the chief executive, to pare costs and reinvigorate a stagnant business. Previous rounds of layoffs took place in 2009 and 2008. Huge mistake - pretty much all the literature on the topic agrees that slow trickles of layoffs are disastrously bad for morale. If you have to make cuts, you really want do…

"If you have to make cuts, you really want do it once, all at the same time, and then put it behind you."

I'm fairly sure that's what Yahoo did at the end of 2008 in their "Get Fit" exercise. We were told that the cuts would be severe so they would not have to go through this ever again.

And I think this is now the fourth layoff since that "layoff-to-end-all-layoffs". I hear rumours that they are already scheduling another round of layoffs in engineering later this year, somewhere near September/October.

Re: Yahoo to Let 140 Employees Go

#14

Post by jacquesm »

Isofarro wrote: post #11
lionhearted wrote: post #7

> The reduction comes a month after the Web portal let around 600 workers go as part of a strategy by Carol A. Bartz, the chief executive, to pare costs and reinvigorate a stagnant business. Previous rounds of layoffs took place in 2009 and 2008. Huge mistake - pretty much all the literature on the topic agrees that slow trickles of layoffs are disastrously bad for morale. If you have to make cuts, you really want do…

"If you have to make cuts, you really want do it once, all at the same time, and then put it behind you." I'm fairly sure that's what Yahoo did at the end of 2008 in their "Get Fit" exercise. We were told that the cuts would be severe so they would not have to go through this ever again. And I think this is now the fourth layoff since that "layoff-to-end-all-layoffs". I hear rumours that they are already scheduling a…

I hope your job is safe from that round. If not run while you can.

Re: Yahoo to Let 140 Employees Go

#15

Post by jacquesm »

jscore wrote: post #9

Yahoo is pretty much done (from an ex-Yahoo)

Looking in from the outside I'd agree with you, but what's next then? Slow death? Buy-out? (at a valuation lower than the bid that saw Jerry Yang get ousted).

They still have some really strong properties (though I imagine flickr to be feeling the heat of Facebook), a 2 minutes to twelve turn-around can't be completely ruled out but it's not going to happen under current management.

Re: Yahoo to Let 140 Employees Go

#19

Post by DanLar75 »

nowarninglabel wrote: post #3

Considering the cuts are coming from the Marketing team (at least according to the article) I can't feel any sort of sympathy.

I would almost argue that the Marketing team is the ONE thing about Yahoo that is actually working. It's not the lack of smart marketing, it's the lack of smart functionality that is digging the grave for Yahoo!
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