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Yammer CEO won't hire anyone from Yahoo who doesn't quit in next 60 days

venturebeat.com

11–20 of 202 posts

Re: Yammer CEO won't hire anyone from Yahoo who doesn't quit in next 60 days

#11
post #6

Does Yammer have similar policies against hiring people from Apple, Microsoft, or Oracle? This reeks of publicity-seeking.

Agreed. Just reading the headline alone, I wondered to myself how presumptuous he was to assume that many Yahoo employees even wanted to work at Yammer.

Re: Yammer CEO won't hire anyone from Yahoo who doesn't quit in next 60 days

#12
post #4

This goes a bit far. I am sure there are fine folks at Yahoo who have achieved seniority that they need to support their families. They may object to how the company does business, but can't just walk away job. Is the hiring situation in the Valley really so intense that anyone could find new work in 60 days?

I agree. This statement seems like an overreaction of Yammer's CEO.

Re: Yammer CEO won't hire anyone from Yahoo who doesn't quit in next 60 days

#13
I thought his statement was over the top at first, but after I read the article I say good for him for standing up for what he thinks is right.

We all know that this patent nonsense has got to stop. There is nobody building any app anywhere that does not violate some patent. The only way we are surviving is by being under the radar.

Let's not forgive Yahoo for this like we forgave Amazon. I'm especially pissed at Yahoo for making me take the side of Facebook on something.

Re: Yammer CEO won't hire anyone from Yahoo who doesn't quit in next 60 days

#14
post #4

This goes a bit far. I am sure there are fine folks at Yahoo who have achieved seniority that they need to support their families. They may object to how the company does business, but can't just walk away job. Is the hiring situation in the Valley really so intense that anyone could find new work in 60 days?

Any talented engineer, yes. So either you're soulless and refuse to leave, or you're incompetent and you're scared to leave. Either way, not hiring them seems fair to me.

Things are rarely that cut and dry. That "soulless" programmer could be locked into a contract from an acquisition, or have other reasons that I don't think warrant a presumptuous "soulless" label.

Re: Yammer CEO won't hire anyone from Yahoo who doesn't quit in next 60 days

#15
post #2

I wonder if Yammer could issue some sort of legal covenant not to sue that would be binding even if they sold the company or the patent changed hands some other way? It looks like Yammer's CEO filed a patent as recently as last August: http://www.google.com/patents?id=D-r_AQAAEBAJ&printsec=f...

If you want to bind yourself from suing people who violate the patent just give the patent to public domain, it will have the same effect.

Re: Yammer CEO won't hire anyone from Yahoo who doesn't quit in next 60 days

#16
post #6

Does Yammer have similar policies against hiring people from Apple, Microsoft, or Oracle? This reeks of publicity-seeking.

Agreed. Just reading the headline alone, I wondered to myself how presumptuous he was to assume that many Yahoo employees even wanted to work at Yammer.

Yep, now I just want to actively avoid learning what yammer is.

Re: Yammer CEO won't hire anyone from Yahoo who doesn't quit in next 60 days

#17
If you only decide to stop hiring Yahoo engineers now, you're a bit too late to the game. Anyone who's still at Yahoo1 today is probably someone who hasn't been able to find a job elsewhere. I have interviewed a lot of Yahoo! engineers these past years and it's been an unmitigated (as in 100% rejection) disaster.

Re: Yammer CEO won't hire anyone from Yahoo who doesn't quit in next 60 days

#18
If I were a talented engineer, I would never apply to Yammer in the first place. (Yahoo employee here), I think its time these companies stop thinking so highly of themselves, the sad truth is everyone does patent litigation, fix the system before making sweeping statements or atleast be fair and blame everyone (apple, msft etc included) .There is a bias in the valley against yahoo, some of which is deserved most of which is not. Yahoo has some attractive challenges of scale that might be appealing to some folks and be reason enough to work here. Most of the companies that try to act supercool don't even have a real revenue model.

Re: Yammer CEO won't hire anyone from Yahoo who doesn't quit in next 60 days

#19
post #3

While his stance is perhaps extreme, I think it forms part of a larger rejection of Yahoo by the tech community. Sadly, that's going to hurt everyone- Yahoo has some phenomenal tech going on, but most of it generates no revenue. So, we stop using it, Yahoo just fires the developers and continues on it's "content portal" path. Sad.

If you can't overreact on the Internet, where can you overreact?

Re: Yammer CEO won't hire anyone from Yahoo who doesn't quit in next 60 days

#20
post #4

This goes a bit far. I am sure there are fine folks at Yahoo who have achieved seniority that they need to support their families. They may object to how the company does business, but can't just walk away job. Is the hiring situation in the Valley really so intense that anyone could find new work in 60 days?

> Is the hiring situation in the Valley really so intense that anyone could find new work in 60 days?

If you can program your way out of a paper bag and find your ass with both hands and a google search, yeah.

Which isn't to say that everyone can feasibly walk away in 60 days. If you're waiting for compensation to vest after an acquisition by Yahoo!, say.

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