
Laying off George - ajbatac
http://www.zeldman.com/2008/12/16/laying-off-george/
======
noonespecial
There seems to be a clue or two missing in middle management.

Its like throwing out the projector because they figure that now that they
have the image on the wall, who needs it?

I sense a hard lesson about to be learned. Good luck in your next endevour,
George.

~~~
JacobAldridge
"like throwing out the projector because...they have the image on the wall,
who needs it".

You just made my day. Thank you.

------
gruseom
Did anyone else notice the oxymoron here?

"I'll just get straight to the point. You've been affected by the layoffs."

I guess it shouldn't surprise me that a middle manager would call a weasly
euphemism getting "straight to the point".

~~~
andreyf
In his defense, he admitted he was reading a script provided to him by HR.

~~~
gruseom
We don't know whether that line was in the script or not. If it was, we can
chalk the weasliness up to the whole company (which _would_ surprise me a
little - I thought more highly of Yahoo).

Incidentally, I agree with the commenters here who've pointed out that the
cancellation of the project and layoff itself hardly seem unreasonable or
tragic. It's the corporate culture I'm commenting on. If this vignette is
indicative, Yahoo is in worse shape than I thought.

~~~
andreyf
_If it was, we can chalk the weasliness up to the whole company_

I find it hard to talk about "the nature" of a company the size of Yahoo -
this is more the "weasliness" of some HR employee which didn't get corrected
by the structure of the company. Of course, it doesn't say anything about the
many brilliant employees that had nothing to do with the layoffs.

~~~
gruseom
_I find it hard to talk about "the nature" of a company the size of Yahoo_

I don't. I noticed years ago that organizations have distinct characters that
seem mostly to trace back to their originators. Sometimes the connection is so
strong that it almost seems the company itself has a personality. It's true
the effect may weaken as companies get big (bureaucracy is depressingly
uniform), and we're talking about patterns not laws (lots of room for
individual variation), but what's striking is how noticeable the effect is
despite those caveats.

------
adamsmith
I'm sorry to hear how hard it's been for George. Flickr is a great product and
has had huge returns for Yahoo.

That said, my uninformed reaction is to consider this a good move. The last
thing Yahoo needs is another project with no clear business model, regardless
how cool. This is the kind of work that should be funded by massive donations
like wikipedia. If it's going to be supported by a company, it shouldn't be
one on life support.

~~~
fauigerzigerk
You know, if yahoo is unable to find a way to make money off something like
Flickr, there is no way any number of layoffs will save them.

And there's something else I don't get. Why are they not trying to outsource
projects that they do not consider to be core? Why are they not asking people
like George to enter into some other kind of contractual relationship with
them that would allow the continuation of a good project? Someone as well
connected as George might be able to find additional funding for Flickr
Commons from other sources.

------
sh1mmer
#1 I work for Yahoo #2 I wasn't laid off #3 this is 100% my opinion not the
company and I have no insight into Flickr policy or strategy

I think the lay-offs are really hard for the people involved however you do
them. I think Yahoo could have done better by not keeping people hanging for 3
months.

That said has it occurred to people that it was Flickr Commons rather than
George that was seen as an unnecessary cost. Commons is awesome, but it
doesn't seem to be something that is going to make money for Flickr/Yahoo.

In terms of the way that George was laid off, how do you lay off someone
thousands of miles away? Is there a good way? I doubt it. The script seems
insensitive but Yahoo has easily enough revenue to make it an easy target for
HR based lawsuits. The script is there to protect the company from people that
might exploit a more human process.

There has been a bunch of bad press today about our layoffs it really feels
sucky to people, and I get that. I know other people who left and I know Yahoo
has given them an amazing package. Since then they have been talking to a lot
of companies about a range of roles. I think a lot of those people may come
out with a couple of extra months pay because they were laid off. It won't
remove the struggle and emotional stress that losing you job has but I hope it
somewhat soothes the pain.

I personally find it upsetting that people keep attacking the company for
doing what was in the best interests of it's shareholders. I struggle to think
of people I know at Yahoo that aren't smart and working hard to make good
products.

Maybe not every decision that has been made has been perfect, and maybe there
is a more bureaucracy than I'd like but every commentator is a genius in
hindsight. I, like Michael Arrington, know that Hitler probably shouldn't have
invaded Russia in Winter and that maybe we should have bought Google when we
had the chance.

I guess what I'm saying is I expected HN to be a place where people look a
little deeper and think a little bit more. I wish you'd do that for us before
you continue to throw your stones.

------
brm
Sure Yahoo sucks, but take the good side of this story George Oates will do
awesome work wherever she goes next so build something that's worth having her
work on it and then get in touch

~~~
ardell
Terrible situation, sorry to hear about it. Brm, you're exactly right, as
truly high-quality employees are let go from failing big companies it creates
unbelievable opportunities for startups to pick them up.

It's true no matter whether you work for a small company or large company--if
you do something that's valuable to someone, you won't go hungry.

~~~
delano
Don't forget about the added sting of having worked on Flickr from the
beginning. She was an employee of Ludicorp before being an employee of Yahoo.

------
swombat
Tip when laying off your blogger/evangelist: be civil. Otherwise, you look
like a bunch of assholes. Bad Yahoo, bad.

------
rthomas6
Why not just link directly to the actual blog post?

------
mynameishere
Here's the real link (question to poster: Why did you link to an unnecessary
reference?)

[http://george08.blogspot.com/2008/12/not-quite-what-i-had-
in...](http://george08.blogspot.com/2008/12/not-quite-what-i-had-in-mind.html)

My comment: Congratulations to the affected. A website that does little
besides arranging "img" elements is fundamentally lame. I was hit in the 2001
blowout, and it was probably the best thing that could have happened. Find
something good.....

~~~
mynameishere
Not sure why people are defending flickr. There are lots of equivilent
websites, and have been long before it ever existed. I stand by my comment:
It's fundamentally lame. If I was a CS professor, I would have sophmores make
a clone of it for a 2-week project. Just because it's the most popular in its
class doesn't mean it transcends the extreme simplicity of said class.

Frankly, I don't even like it. Whose aesthetic ideal is responsible for the
decision to show pictures at a size other than the maximum (up to a practical
limit)? Show me the full-sized picture. Just seems obvious.

What exactly does this have:

<http://flickr.com/photos/mongol/515509897/in/photostream/>

That this doesn't:

[http://flickr.com/photos/mongol/515509897/sizes/o/in/photost...](http://flickr.com/photos/mongol/515509897/sizes/o/in/photostream/)

(Obviously, you could put the various widgets next to and below the above
picture with plenty of space to spare.)

~~~
nostrademons
Missing the point. Sites that have been technologically equivalent or better
than Flickr have been around since the first dot-com boom. The genius of
Flickr was in building a community around it.

It's really easy for technophiles to say "Oh, I could build that in a week",
and usually they can. The problem is, nobody will use it. Building a community
is _really fricking hard_ \- it's the sort of task where everyone says "Oh, I
can do that" up until they actually try it and then find out that there's a
lot of subtlety to it they've completely missed.

Same goes for Reddit, and Twitter. Those are two other sites that are
cloneable in a weekend, but nobody will use your clone.

~~~
whatusername
But they've lost everyone but the photographers to facebook.

The combination of the news feed and tagging people in photos (and having them
show up in the news feed!) is facebooks secret sauce

~~~
gaius
Flickr occupies a weird space between photo.net (which is almost all
photographers) and Facebook (people who take photos of each other). It may be
great for photo-hosting, but no-one wants that in a vaccuum.

------
cturner
So will we see a "getting the band back together" effort from Ludicorp alumni?
:)

~~~
delano
I'm still waiting for the next Game Neverending beta.

------
tsally
You can't be fired without some sort of severance pay or package, correct? Or
am I just crazy.

~~~
potatolicious
In states with at-will employment your job can be terminated - by either side
- with no notice (hence no obligation for severance), with some exceptions
against illegal discrimination (e.g. being fired because you're black).

Most companies will offer you some sort of severance - or at least won't ask
for their signing bonus/relocation/etc back, but that's out of goodwill, not
legal obligation.

~~~
nostrademons
Self interest as well. Lots of companies want you to sign additional
agreements on the way out (don't trash the computers, don't bad-mouth the
company, etc.) and you have no reason to sign these if they don't give you
something in return.

~~~
dmh2000
just what I was going to say. it his blog he mentioned they were faxing out
some 'agreement' for him to sign. My immediate reaction was 'why the fuck
would he sign anything?'.

