
Yahoo planning 10% layoffs as early as this month, report says - e15ctr0n
http://www.bizjournals.com/sanjose/news/2016/01/07/yahoo-planning-10-layoffs-as-early-as-thismonth.html
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Esau
Don't worry people; I am sure the CEO will be okay.

~~~
w1ntermute
Mayer will be walking away with a $158M golden parachute[0], and will
undoubtedly have another nice executive position lined up in no time.

It's amazing how much respect she's garnered in the tech community. From all
the public info on her, she doesn't seem to have much product vision - rather,
she's just a manager who's good at making data-driven decisions (the infamous
"41 shades of blue"[1]) to incrementally optimize products that already have
their flywheels spinning, and got insanely lucky by betting on the right horse
back in 1999.

0:
[http://www.usatoday.com/story/money/markets/2015/12/04/maris...](http://www.usatoday.com/story/money/markets/2015/12/04/marissa-
mayer-severance-benefits/76781384/)

1: [http://stopdesign.com/archive/2009/03/20/goodbye-
google.html](http://stopdesign.com/archive/2009/03/20/goodbye-google.html)

~~~
andrewvc
I agree and disagree with your point. It's incredibly hard to determine how
much good a new CEO has done, and how much is inertia. I think that's a strong
argument against the incredibly high CEO pay in contemporary companies, it
dramatically underestimates the importance of the work of the rank and file.

That being said, if you ARE going to judge her by contemporary CEO standards,
the question is, would anyone else have done better? And of the set of people
who could have done better, how many would take an offer to fix yahoo
contingent on performance? I think the answer is probably zero.

The whole system is rigged, companies feel like they have to pick someone out
of a relatively narrow talent pool, and since they are (wrongly) in such
demand, they can all command extremely high salaries.

~~~
sremani
If no one could have gotten better results, I can think of many capable people
who could have gotten similar results for a lot cheap. Yahoo! is almost paying
MM $400 million and the $110 million exec who stayed about 11 months she
fired. For all the Meritocracy talk about general foot soldiers, the SV execs
seem to get a lot of "Participation Trophies".

~~~
negamax
She's making more than Tim Cook? No way

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simi_
My thoughts exactly. IIRC Tim makes around 10 mil per year.

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dagw
10 mil + ~45 mil in stock grants. Still a pretty good bargain, all things
considered.

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staunch
Steve Jobs took no pay at all for years. If he had played hardball with the
board, he could've become the richest man in the world. Tim Cook is not doing
it for the money either.

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yeukhon
Yahoo needs to kill off half of their products and just focus on four things:

* news (finance & sports)

* Search & Portal (that's where they make $$$)

* YMail (because there are still millions of users)

* fantasy sports and extend it.

Spin off Tumblr and Flickr into a startup focus on content and high-quality
photo source (TBH there is very little quality content on Tumblr and the
attraction / hype is gone - speaking from user after five years of using
Tumblr), and other applications should be killed, including their article
reading mobile app, Developer network, and the newly resurrected Y! Messenger.

BTW, Yahoo is one of the most generous companies out there paying security
bounty (good and bad for too many submissions :] )

~~~
aylmao
Disagree about Tumblr.

A year ago it was still the fastest growing social platform, and it still
proves to be (especially in 2015) the big source of viral internet content.

~~~
yeukhon
Fastest doesn't mean actually making tons of money. Sure vaulation on # of
user, but a business can't live forever with # of users. How many of these
users are making original contents? I keep seeing posts from years ago getting
liked over and over by the people I follow on Tumblr.

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reddygaru
Don't kill Tumblr please. It is my go to source for porn.

~~~
wsc981
There's still Bing Videos[0]. It's super effective!

\---

[0]: [https://www.bing.com/?scope=video](https://www.bing.com/?scope=video)

~~~
mrweasel
Strangely enough Bing Videos doesn't work anymore. I don't know if it's a
regional thing or if they killed it.

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iofj
That's the second time : [http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/04/04/yahoo-
layoffs-2000-...](http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/04/04/yahoo-
layoffs-2000-jobs-cut_n_1402470.html)

~~~
gcb0
second? how quaint...

every single CEO did that. some every year.

mayer did her's in small installments to not show up in the media. but still
got the same cut at the end.

i think it's some textbook the board have

~~~
voltagex_
There has to be a better way to run a company... this kind of thing from so
many companies world wide cannot be good for society as a whole.

~~~
eru
Why? Releasing the workforce from an unproductive company is exactly what
society needs.

The opposite is zombie companies.

~~~
voltagex_
Perhaps Yahoo should have been split into smaller companies sooner. With
better management, Flickr could have been Instagram.

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toomuchtodo
I've been preparing to try to make an offer for Flickr in the event it goes up
for sale (separate from the rest of the web business), organizing it as a
benefit corp to be a long term business not to be put up for sale. It
shouldn't be an Instagram. Its not a social network. Its a photo site that
helps you organize/keep your photos, as well as share them (there's a
difference).

Just bidding my time, ear to the ground.

~~~
tamana
Why? There are many great photography hosting services. Flickr is only special
because Yahoo makes it free as a marketing gesture

~~~
toomuchtodo
Can you list one? I've found SmugMug and 500px to be significantly inferior to
Flickr, which is why I'm still a Pro Flickr subscriber.

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hwestbrook
I wonder if 10% is enough of a cut to make the business viable again, or if
this is just pandering to the market. Seems likely that someone picked this
number out of the air to make a statement.

~~~
nullrouted
Time to buy magic 8 ball stock as Yahoo is certainly increasing demand.

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gcb0
investors who bought YHOO just to wait the Ali baba sale would love the
company cut 500mi/year over year in salaries (or disinvest on products?) so
when the dismantling finally comes the pie slices are bigger.

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ausjke
Been a yahoo mail premium member for so many years (along with its calendar)
it's something I care daily. From about 2 years ago the new mail became a hit
or miss randomly, overall a much worse experience than what I used to have,
and I am unhappy about that.

To me since Mayer came to power, yahoo email became less reliable, a big
negative.

~~~
bruceb
I have accounts on the 3 main providers Hotmail, Gmail, Yahoo Mail. Which
gives me the most trouble? Yahoo Mail.

When Mayer became CEO she told employees to start using Yahoo Mail. I wonder
how many are actually doing so. I would think if they were actually using it
the product would now have less glitches.

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ec109685
All of them.

~~~
pcardh0
That is correct, everyone at Yahoo uses yahoo mail

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hkmurakami
Preparing for a sale of their "internet business" perhaps.

~~~
alexandrerond
When Nokia sold the Devices division to Microsoft it did the opposite, did not
fire anyone, and let the new owner take care of it...

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vonklaus
Nokia, in many ways, was the pioneer of SaaS. They developed a globally
recognized product that would become both the iconic application associated
with early cellphone applications and paved the way for a globally distributed
market for mobile gaming.

However, as time went on while using the product, it became increasingly
difficult to find room to move horizontally as well as vertically within the
space. Ultimately, continually completing objectives made it more difficult to
pivot.

Inevitably, their SaaS product became frustrating and deprecated and the
marginal utility diminished. With a lack of new offerings Nokia was forced out
of the market it created (Snake as a Service) and we were forced to go back to
playing the helicopter game on the bewest RIM blackberry.

~~~
jacquesm
I never saw them involved in the service business at all, to me they were a
hardware company and nothing else. That's how I look at my phone (and
computers too), as pieces of hardware not tied to any particular service or
eco-system unless I decide they should be. I don't buy subsidized phones with
a 'plan' and what software comes with the computer I buy is wiped out before
it even gets run once.

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bitL
Next logical step - Yahoo should hire Elop as CEO ;-)

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branchless
Love the yahoo stock portfolio view. If you know a better one please let me
know, just for my interest.

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brandon272
I've thought for some time that Yahoo! should have moved into the streaming
video business, including emulating Netflix and producing original content on
a subscription basis. In the very least it would have been a way to lure
people to their website and get them to spend a lot more time within/adjacent
to the Yahoo! ecosystem.

Come to think of it, I'm not even sure if Yahoo! has ever done anything video
related. I wonder why?

~~~
bsimpson
[https://yodel.yahoo.com/blogs/general/live-yahoo-saturday-
ni...](https://yodel.yahoo.com/blogs/general/live-yahoo-saturday-
night-232247921.html)

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_original_programs_dist...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_original_programs_distributed_by_Yahoo)!

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mailmrg
10% for Yahoo, given the current suite of products is low. for long time yahoo
hasn't streamlined their product offerings. Just streamlining them alone will
help them become more leaner. as far as CEO is concerned, yes, she is very
much covered.

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aaawow
new WhatsApp coming

~~~
orsenthil
This is the best comment.

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codyguy
They could have been serious contender in semantic search. I remember trying
to reach out to some yahoos regarding an ambitious, yet serious proposal on
semantic search using ThatNeedle.com. we could have made an impact. I could
not get to the right audience even for a demo or a proposal. I guess they have
too many silos built on top of an ivory tower. Nonetheless, it would be sad to
see them fade away.

~~~
ugh123
You mean you tried to peddle your startup (for acquisition likely) to them and
you couldn't get your foot in the door? And that could have made them a
"contender"? Please

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codyguy
outsourcing search to Bing certainly didn't help. Not sure they had much to
lose in search.

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ilostmykeys
A society that has no saftey net except for the lucky and rather dumb 1%ers is
one that will fall apart, sooner or later. Or experience radical disruption.

