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Yelp lays off 1000, furloughs 1100

blog.yelp.com

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Re: Yelp lays off 1000, furloughs 1100

#121

Post by orky56 »

stri8ed wrote: post #115
23B1 wrote: post #106

Good riddance to an exploitative business.

Please explain.

Yelp is accused of predatory practices on business owners including pushing them to sign up for a paid subscription to hide negative reviews on their Yelp page. Otherwise, you are vulnerable to their algorithm which hides/shows reviews that are often less than favorable. Yelp reviews are now overtaking business' own pages on Google searches leaving businesses with less option to control, let alone, curate their brand's messaging.

Re: Yelp lays off 1000, furloughs 1100

#124

Post by fred_is_fred »

Waterluvian wrote: post #5

I know this is a very tired topic, but does anyone have any good blog posts or articles about "what exactly is it that you all do?" Yelp having 6000 employees. I'm not surprised, I'm not mad. I just want to understand.

A company like Yelp needs a lot of boots on the ground type staff to work with restaurants on the sales side. Their infra may scale but that function doesn't.

Re: Yelp lays off 1000, furloughs 1100

#125

Post by fred_is_fred »

duggable wrote: post #59

> Today we will let 1,000 of our colleagues go and furlough approximately 1,100 more, while reducing hours for others. Your department leaders will be in touch this morning to discuss how this affects you individually, and letters with more details and FAQs will follow this afternoon. Honest question - is it normal to announce layoffs publicly before telling the affected employees? I guess I can understand it from a…

For a publicly traded company it might be required, otherwise it's effectively material insider information that you've just shared with the whole company.

Re: Yelp lays off 1000, furloughs 1100

#126

Post by subsubzero »

013a wrote: post #44
Waterluvian wrote: post #5

I know this is a very tired topic, but does anyone have any good blog posts or articles about "what exactly is it that you all do?" Yelp having 6000 employees. I'm not surprised, I'm not mad. I just want to understand.

Yelp's engineering isn't likely much more than ~150 people (I worked there ~2 years ago, maybe has grown since then but honestly, given their revenue situation even then, likely not by much). The mix there is just like most companies; you've got dedicated teams for each of their apps (which includes Android, iOS, web, business-facing, etc), you've got API teams, back office teams working on moving data around and bus…

That number ~150 engineers seems way too small, at most tech companies I worked at, engineering comprises 40-50% of the staff, if it doesn't something would seem very off. Engineering in this case is product, platform, IT, hardware etc.

Re: Yelp lays off 1000, furloughs 1100

#127

Post by dguaraglia »

crimsonalucard wrote: post #36
scurvy wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sales and account management are easier to hire and fire. That said I bet some engineers were let go. If you're not directly client facing or related to e-commerce, you're not essential right now.

Realistically I would say a lot of engineers are easy to fire. You only need a certain amount of engineers to do maintenance.

Engineers are easy to fire, but incredibly hard (and expensive) to hire, especially if you become known as the company that'll fire people immediately in a crisis. There's a fine line between saving money now and spending it later, and I'm sure Yelp - just like every other company out there - is trying to figure out where does that line lay.

Re: Yelp lays off 1000, furloughs 1100

#128

Post by duskwuff »

carlineng wrote: post #83
Waterluvian wrote: post #5

I know this is a very tired topic, but does anyone have any good blog posts or articles about "what exactly is it that you all do?" Yelp having 6000 employees. I'm not surprised, I'm not mad. I just want to understand.

Yelp is a public company, and their SEC filings will give you insight into where they spend money. In 2019, over half of their expenses were Sales and Marketing, so we can infer that many of the 6000 employees are likely in roles dedicated to Sales and Marketing. http://d18rn0p25nwr6d.cloudfront.net/CIK-0001345016/360caaf2...

And it'd make sense that the sales team would be first on the chopping block. With small businesses under pressure, and many closed down entirely, publicity services like Yelp are a very hard sell.

Re: Yelp lays off 1000, furloughs 1100

#129

Post by quaquaqua1 »

carlineng wrote: post #83
Waterluvian wrote: post #5

I know this is a very tired topic, but does anyone have any good blog posts or articles about "what exactly is it that you all do?" Yelp having 6000 employees. I'm not surprised, I'm not mad. I just want to understand.

Yelp is a public company, and their SEC filings will give you insight into where they spend money. In 2019, over half of their expenses were Sales and Marketing, so we can infer that many of the 6000 employees are likely in roles dedicated to Sales and Marketing. http://d18rn0p25nwr6d.cloudfront.net/CIK-0001345016/360caaf2...

Not exactly, if they just so happen to be spending a lot of money on purchases of ad-space, or advertising services.

For example, just one marketing VP with a salary of $120,000 could have an advertising spend budget of a few million.

But in Yelp's specific case, they do have a ton of sales/customer service people who most definitely are among the first to go, along with engineers who are working on projects that are not related to keeping the website from 404ing

Re: Yelp lays off 1000, furloughs 1100

#130

Post by 1MoreThing »

duggable wrote: post #59

> Today we will let 1,000 of our colleagues go and furlough approximately 1,100 more, while reducing hours for others. Your department leaders will be in touch this morning to discuss how this affects you individually, and letters with more details and FAQs will follow this afternoon. Honest question - is it normal to announce layoffs publicly before telling the affected employees? I guess I can understand it from a…

This is usually coordinated. PR talks to a friendly outlet, gives them the exclusive on the story with the caveat that the timing is released a few minutes after employees have been informed. This lets them get correct information out, control the narrative, and gets the friendly news outlet an exclusive story. Generally speaking, it's also done to be respectful to the people who just got laid off.
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