[SGVLUG] Reasons why people are leaving Yahoo...

[Christopher Smith]

On Tue, Mar 25, 2008 at 5:37 PM, Emerson, Tom (*IC)
<Tom.Emerson at wbconsultant.com> wrote:
> I know some of our members /used/ to work at Yahoo, so this may be "old"
> news to them, but I'm curious as to how accurate this is...
>
> http://blog.bincsearch.com/?p=153

It is worth mentioning that this guy has all kinds of reasons to talk
smack about Yahoo, and apparently isn't wise enough to recognize why
they shouldn't. ;-)

So, I've only been away for 9 months now, and I keep in touch with
folks who are still there. Let me try my best to answer.

1. I think a lot of people at Yahoo! dislike Microsoft, particularly
the engineers, but it isn't nearly as clear cut as that. I've spoken
with many folks there who are hoping that an acquisition by MSFT will
actually shake up some of the aspects of Yahoo that have become
dysfunctional. I think they all are hoping that the *offer* alone will
make things better (and there is evidence that Yahoo is accelerating
certain changes in order to respond to that).

2. I think it is safe to say that startups are, in general, more
nimble than their competition. Those that aren't tend to have little
reason to exist and drop off the map *very* quickly. That said Yahoo
has a massive network of users and services that really is awesome
when you sit back and look at it. One need only look at the recent
successes of Buzz and Ask Yahoo to recognize how powerful that can be.
Yahoo has so many different products and services, it's impossible to
generalize and say they are all 2 years behind, so hearing that from
someone's mouth is a good sign that they don't know what they are
talking about. I do think Yahoo Groups has been underdeveloped for at
least the last 5 years, but the community is still frighteningly
significant. In other areas, it's kind of silly. Yahoo Search is
better than the search at any start up that I've looked at (and I've
looked at a lot of them), and really only has three competitors worth
mentioning, all of which are technically fairly close. Yahoo Mobile is
considered one the better mobile services out there. Really, in most
places Yahoo competes, it's in the top 3, and in a number of places it
is #1. Not surprisingly, this is why MSFT wants to acquire them.

3. This is very true, and one of the challenges that big companies
constantly try to deal with, some with greater success. There are good
reasons why big companies have a tough time innovating, not the least
of which is that it can get you in trouble (more than a few
innovations at Yahoo were not well received by Yahoo's large community
of users). Launching new innovations is tricky business too. Believe
it or not, most people will think an innovation is a horrible idea
unless it is presented the right way, and people are more than willing
to trash things ruthlessly online, even if they are horribly informed.
One of the coolest things I've ever seen in search in the past few
years was Yahoo! Mindset:

http://mindset.research.yahoo.com/

It was soft launched (almost no PR), and was immediately misunderstood
and trashed by the world at large. It is a technology demo, and never
maintained or updated, but I still find it quite useful (and you have
no idea how much nicer it could have been too... ;-).

4. Well, this is very true, but it is over, and certainly not much of
a concern if you are applying there right now. Yahoo handed out what
amounts to poison pill retainment packages to employees, that mean
that a MSFT acquisition will give them a huge cushion of cash over and
above any severance for when they are looking for a job. Nobody I've
spoken with there seems terribly worried about being fired. Indeed,
some are hoping that they will be. ;-)

5. It's not about how many hats you wear, it's about how much you can
do without having to get signoff from tons of other people. There are
lots of very smart engineers at Yahoo who are just bursting with ideas
of things to do, but it is very hard to be innovative when you have to
coordinate launches and protect a brand within such a large company.

6. I think this is very, very true, although I get the impression
people thing this is changing under Yang, and the expectation is this
will change even more under MSFT (which makes sense), although
obviously there will always be a big target on Google.

7. Discussion of stock prices is always fraught with peril. ;-) The
prices are going down for two reasons: MSFT is going down, which
reduces the MSFT offer value, and the market is less certain that the
deal will happen (you'll notice some spikes upward when the market
becomes more confident). Either way, the current value of the stock is
really more about the offer than how the company is doing. If you
think the deal is going to happen, now is a fantastic time to get some
options locked in at a somewhat lower price. If you think the deal
isn't going to happen... that's when you want to look at financial
compensation. ;-). If you are a current employee and you are valued,
you've got these great golden handcuffs that give you all kinds of
reasons to stay.

8. This point seems redundant with several of the other points. I
noticed that the recent layoffs heavily targetted middle management
though, so there is reason to think this will change. If/when MSFT
shows up, you can expect that incompetent management will be popular
targets for "right sizing". ;-)

9. Panama and other high priority projects really do seem to demand
ridiculous commitment from people, often counter productively so. Of
course, if you are going to work at a start up, don't think it is
going to be any easier. No question there are easier jobs than working
at Yahoo though. Hopefully the HR folks and the hiring manager will
present an applicant with a reasonable expectation of what will be
expected of them. Failure to do so means that an employee will leave
before they are useful, and Yahoo has been around *way* to long to
really screw that up.

Honestly, I think this guy is an idiot. Yahoo is no paradise, and it
has a lot of problems, but there are only so many places you can work
at where you get to work on web applications/services that scale to
500 million users, and that alone can be a lot of fun and a great
learning experience for those who have never done it. Certainly, there
are lots of changes going on there right now, but if you have the
right hedges, it may be worth taking a risk to see if the changes
prove to be fruitful.

-- 
Chris