

Yahoos Freaking Out Over 20% Layoff Rumors - bretthellman
http://techcrunch.com/2010/11/11/yahoos-freaking-out-over-20-layoff-rumors/

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wccrawford
“Yahoo! is always evaluating expenses to align with the company’s financial
goals. However, a 20% reduction in Yahoo’s workforce across the board is
misleading and inaccurate.”

Yeah, I'm sure some divisions will lay off 21% and some 19%, so there!

Responding to rumors with statements like the above is worse than refusing to
respond at all.

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phlux
I'd say that techcrunch may have just saved a few hundred people their jobs.

> _Carol_ : "Shit, TC is onto us. reduce it to ~17.9% and find me the person
> who leaked this info OFF WITH THEIR HEADS"

~~~
ary
_I'd say that techcrunch may have just saved a few hundred people their jobs._

Doubtful. If they're going to lay people off they'll just stagger the
"changes" by a few months.

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bretthellman
"managers have been asked to begin to make the tough decisions on who stays
and who goes" -- As a former Y!, my suggestion, get rid of the managers keep
the doers.

~~~
jmathai
As a current Yahoo! I agree with you.

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robryan
If this is true you'd want to hope Carol Bartz takes some kind of pay cut, how
do you defend cost cutting layoffs when your CEO is one of the highest paid?

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smokeyj
I know it's popular to rag on CEO's for being overpaid, but that's the
business of Yahoo and their Board. If their investments aren't sound the
market will decide their fate.

~~~
mgkimsal
"the market will decide their fate."

It seems the market determines the fate of the rank-and-file workers much
quicker - quarterly layoffs - than it does for the CEOs, who often keep
collecting large and increasing annual pay. Yes, 3-4 years of battling 'tough
market conditions' may lead a board to get rid of a CEO, but they'll have
pocketed millions during a decline, whereas the declining period is often
marked by layoffs of people who were implementing the dumb decisions made by
the CEO and board members.

So, true, the 'market' will decide, but the CEOs don't really feel the impact
of the market's decisions quite as much as most workers do.

I don't know much of Bartz's particular situation or pay structure, so I can't
comment on her.

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fearless
Is anyone else tired of Techcrunch always sounding the death knoll for Yahoo?
I don't think they've had anything positive to say about Yahoo for years.

~~~
ary
One could also wonder why only Yahoo's negative press gets voted up on HN.

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bretpiatt
Not true, Yahoo's release of S4 was voted up tons just last week:
<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1870029>

~~~
johnswamps
The story isn't really about yahoo, though. Yahoo is not in the title or the
url, isn't prominently displayed on the page, and only mentioned in a few
comments. I didn't even realize it was from yahoo until I read your comment
and I saw the story when it was originally posted. Checking searchyc, the only
s4 story that became really popular was the only one that didn't mention yahoo
in the title.

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jonursenbach
To any Yahoo employees out there, we're hiring at gdgt. <http://gdgt.com/jobs>

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party__
Adding context:

AOL's Techcrunch claims that AOL's competitor Yahoo is performing poorly and
may lay off people.

(as an aside, TC's amazing ability at tanking Yahoo's stock price makes buying
Techcrunch a really smart move by AOL)

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sahaj
there have been rumors of an AOL & Yahoo merger lately. i wonder if this
confirms that rumor. it seems AOL and Yahoo have a lot in common in terms of
tech assets and also in terms of the users having a similar "mindset".

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phlux
Honest question; what valuable/useful services does Yahoo still offer?

I haven't logged into Yahoo mail in more than 2 years.

I do see that finance.yahoo is still a good site -- but hardly an entire
business.

They dont have core technology in search any longer, right?

Ill have to look into what S4 is... ok that looks interesting. Is it competing
with such things as DataSift? -- well its OSS - so not a revenue stream for
them, yet...

I am seriously trying to understand how they would rebuild a business. Serious
pivot is needed it would seem?

~~~
Encosia
Unless GMail has overtaken it very recently, Yahoo Mail is still second only
to Hotmail in terms of user base. The last I saw, both were ahead of GMail by
a fairly large margin.

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mkramlich
I look at the Yahoo site and think, "14k employees to make that happen?!"

Surely a few decently complex Perl scripts could replace a large swath of
them! (said with tongue somewhat in cheek)

~~~
nvoorhies
Wait until you see the google site!

