
Yahoo Lays Off 400 Employees In India - sandeepeecs
http://techcrunch.com/2014/10/07/yahoo-lays-off-employees-in-india-reportedly-up-to-2000-affected/
======
plinkplonk
Yahoo India was pretty bloated, with layer after layer of management with very
high salaries and not much to do. Hard to blame anyone for the decision. There
were some really good devs embedded in all that lard, hopefully they'll be
fine. Five months severance is pretty generous by Indian standards. That said,
even very good engineers don't have as many options here as those in SF have,
and not as many job opportunities,so I'm sure there are quite a few people
feeling desperate today.

(Fwiw, Ms Mayer has been honing this particular axe for a long time now.
Rumors have been circulating inside Yahoo India for quite a while now about an
impending massacre. The good guys mostly left some time ago.)

PS: I don't work at Yahoo, but I do live in Bangalore and know people who
worked there. Fwiw,my friends are all fine,either moved out in time or
relocated to the USA etc. fwiw.)

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ErikRogneby
There aren't as many options _anywhere_ for good engineers as SF. Surely in
Bangalore the big firms like Infosys and Wipro are always hiring experienced
engineers?

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golgappi
They pay peanuts

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eitally
How much do product companies like Yahoo pay in India?

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golgappi
A bit more than twice the amount large consultancies pay. And these large
consultancies recruit tens of thousands of employees every year, as opposed to
product companies that have a total on a few thousand employees.

India is a very tough place to make a good wage even if heavily skilled.
There's a lot of demand, sure. But there's an overload of supply.

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gopalv
I literally started my career there, spent six and half years and made a lot
of friends (I had jobs before yblr) - if any of you worked there, I was the
guy with the afro on roller blades.

Ten years ago, it was an amazing place to work - great people, good managers
and a CEO who sat at the same table for lunch.

[http://notmysock.org/blog/yblr/](http://notmysock.org/blog/yblr/)

I spent more time with those people than I did in college, in my high-school
or any other job since or before. Some of those people today have gotten a
card that says "Move to Sunnyvale or collect your severance".

I feel sad for them, because some of them would hold similar memories of a
great office, want to keep contributing and feel some sort of great loss,
simply from being told that they're not needed.

I don't really worry about them - they're awesome engineers who have been
hiding their talents under a bushel for years.

All of them would have a new job by new year, would burn their severance on a
nice vacation during their break and not worry about their life - it's just
that the temporary but irreplaceable sense of loss, that I can feel as I got
off the phone.

Most of this means nothing - just that this place where we all met and grew up
to be engineers, is no longer there.

Like when your childhood home gets torn apart to make a skyscraper (or worse,
a parking lot).

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q2
It is known that yahoo has identity problems compared to Google/facebook
...etc. If you are a loyal employee, who believes in turnaround and stay till
the end, this type of decisions can be painful. He/she may/may not get a
chance to US and due to other family reasons may not be willing to relocate.

Loyalty, it seems, does not have any value in modern organizations.
Traditionally, in India, job/career is viewed differently than in America. Job
indicates some sort of stability to life and these sort of decisions, can
crash those views. There are some who misused that stability and there are
many who utilized that stability properly and create value to life,society.

I read in news the statements of visiting American CEO's that they understand
India,localize their operations ...etc. My suggestion is, in addition to
understanding "customer/consumer" aspect of Indians, please understand the
other aspects such as society,priorities, values, relative importance ...etc
too. If that is the case, organizations will be careful during hiring, making
sustainable business models avoiding knee-jerk policies.

~~~
themartorana
All due respect, but if US companies look at US employees as expendable cost
units and not as people, what makes you think they'd have any care for
employees in a location they initially came to in order to reduce the cost of
hiring US employees? The increase-profits-at-any-cost model hurts the US
directly as well.

There isn't a huge cultural difference between India and the US here. Many, if
not most people would love a long-term reliable career with a company they
could care about and would care about them and their/their family's well
being. The only reason we have a new culture of adversarial relationships
between employers and employees in the US now is because of the loss of
loyalty on the company side.

India is, maybe, just next up to feel the pain of what happens when money is
placed above all else - including human suffering.

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anirudhan
My friend and a few more in Yahoo were looking for a job switch for quite some
time as there were talks of layoff in the last few months. He got a job a few
days back. And he is getting the severance package. I talked with him a few
minutes back. He is actually feeling great.

~~~
gcb0
and this is why doing dumb layoffs instead of constant performance review does
not help any company.

everyone good is always ready to jump, anda eventually jump, layoff or not.

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cmadan
Sources tell me that they are asking 90% of their staff at Bangalore to
relocate to CA instead of laying off them. Not ideal, but better than being
laid off.

~~~
tjdetwiler
Wouldn't that be impractical or impossible from a visa standpoint? That seems
like a lot of H1Bs in 1 year for a single company.

~~~
wsxcde
They might use L1's which AFAIK aren't capped.

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nell
L1 visas are terrible. You cannot change employers on an L1 Visa.

~~~
alain94040
They are better than H1 visas, because your spouse can work. Other benefits:
no cap, faster path to green card.

~~~
ycskyspeak
Path to Green Card is long and arduous if its a L1B which is most likely going
to be the case

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akshat
This may not be true. The post has been deleted by the actual source.

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bitJericho
Has this been confirmed yet? TC is hardly a reliable source of news.

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caulagi
All the best to the people affected with this decision. We have some
interesting problems and are always open for talented people to join us -
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8396376](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8396376)

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dummyfellow
Does HN adds some weightage for domains, same news from original
source([https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8420579](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8420579))
can't be find on 1st four pages?

~~~
eli
It was on the front page, but I (and probably others) flagged it because it
looked untrustworthy. And indeed it appears to be pretty far off on the
numbers.

That said, what makes it on HN is largely a function of luck.

~~~
bitJericho
Is it possible to ask someone to just keep Techcrunch off the front page?
They're running BS stories like this all the time.

------
known
Humans Need Not Apply [http://motherboard.vice.com/read/why-automation-today-
is-lik...](http://motherboard.vice.com/read/why-automation-today-is-like-
computers-in-the-1980s-video)

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architgupta
To Yahoo! India devs, if you got laid off and need help in finding your next
gig, please feel free to reach out: I am on archit@cleartax.in

A lot of startups in India are hiring and I would be happy to make intros if
you are looking.

------
known
Yahoo India is
[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cost_centre_%28business%29](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cost_centre_%28business%29)

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nilsimsa
Now the number affected got reduced to 400 employees.

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rushabh
The number now is 400. Anyways its a good time for developers in India and I
am sure they won't waste much time finding new jobs.

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ssw1n
Did the Romanians know it ahead of time?

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craigslistmodel
Wow, I didn't see this coming.

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pranayairan
the numbers are deceptive, TC is reporting 400, Nextbigwhat is reporting 2000

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bilalhusain
You forgot to capitalize I in India.

edit: The edited title is way better. Thank you!

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anuragsrathor
Nope. They are actually laying off most of the folks. Very few and the top
guys are getting an offer to relocate to other offices, not specifically the
US. Btw, posting a job requirement now wouldn't be opportunistic rite? :D

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DyslexicAtheist
is Yahoo! ever in the news for something positive?

