I recently got an offer from yahoo! LMC team [managing Yahoo personals, etc]. Profile is White BOX + Developing internal automation test suite.

I was wondering if it is a safe bet to join the company ?

Mine was a bit different case.
I got the interview call from Yahoo!
On the day of the interview the interviewer even did not bother to call me.
I took a day off from office for the interview, I got the mail from him that he will call me the next day .
When I replied that it would not be possible for me to shift the interview to other day and would it be possible to shift that to a mutual convenient time, I never got any reply back from him.
The Yahoo management team sucks, they are taking number one position now leaving “ebay” behind who are the real pioneers in this area LOL.

I still prefer Yahoo! over Google.

@51, obviously you have not interviewed by Google, their interview process is the worst i have seen, first, you have to buy your own tickets, rent your car, then the interview for a position you did not even apply for, they just randomly select a few engineers to interview you, then at last, after interview, you will have to wait four to six weeks to get offer, it is just ridiculous long. how other companies can hold their offer this long?

for the yahoo layoff rumor, i just wish they won’t fire their engineers, without capable engineers, they won’t stand a chance to compete with Google.

Wow, zeke, I can’t believe Google let a man of your obvious intellect go through such a painful interview experience. Please let me know where you are working now so I can immediately buy your stock and short Google’s.

FYI, I just heard that Yahoo will be opening a large R&D center in Israel.

forgot to mention that Google refunded my plane tickets, rental car and hotel in two months after interview, i was a college student and nearly broken at the time, i don’t have a couple of thousands in my credit card, so i have to use my parents’ credit card, that caused a little problem too. i like Google’s products, but their interview process is just horrible in my experience, hope they won’t make you purchase your own tickets again.

There is a strong possibility a recession is coming our way. The U.S faltering housing market highlighted by the subprime mortgage crisis is wrecking havoc in global financial markets. Not to imply that the story above is not relevant. My point is that that may be a sign of things to come.

I would say “Go For It” anonymous.

http://simongeorgeinc.googlepages.com

sad news, but somewhat inevitable. as a former employee, like many have mentioned above, i worked with a bunch of incredibly bright and smart people, and it really was management who were the ones who brought down the company with bad decisions, conveniently lining their already deep pockets further, while us humble folks below got more disgruntled. i remember writing to one of the management team after one of the company’s quarterly “all-hands” meetings where he had taken great delight in dissing and laughing at how AOL was failing miserably. i merely wanted to tell him how things like that can sometimes come back and bite you on the ass in the end. to his credit, he actually wrote back and said he’d temper down such comments in the future. in the end we both left the company, but guess which one of us got to exercise millions of dollars in stock options?

might be that Y! is planning to get rid of the highly paid, experienced, lousy employees and to hire new employees to cut the expenditure.

As a former Y! employee who left amidst the mass exodus of late - my 2 cents
20% is not enough. They can cut back to 5000 employees and basically do everything they are doing now - only better because of less bureaucracy - How?

1) Get rid of - Y! Europe - that battle is lost - Google has completely wiped out Yahoo! in Europe.
2) Close down Y! International in Sunnyvale they are worthless bunch- the only Y! that matters is Japan & China - which is already owned by local entities
3) Get rid of all the sandbox projects done by “researchers” who haven’t done squat to produce any product the last 3 years - that’s all the groups in SF downtown office, the Berkeley office, etc. Let Google with its billions coddle worthless ex-academics, you don’t have the luxury.
4) Sell off Yahoo! Shopping, Autos, Local, Travel - all the properties that are e-commerce also-rans.
5) Keep Search, FrontPage, News, Sports, Mail, Messenger, Groups, Answers

Places to Invest
1) Fire Marco and actually hire someone who knows something about Mobile - become #1 provider of Mobile content from existing properties
2) Hire away the best behavioral targeting specialists from Google and become #1 in content/behavioral targeting
3) Become a much better social platform for Millions in Y!Groups -

Yahoo has bright engineers who are capable of building good products; though they are not glorified as the Google boys. But, its over-dependence on MBA’s to release products could be one of the problems. MBA’s may be good to run business, but not good to come up with ideas on killer apps.

Look at the status of Yahoo Pipes- even google employers use it to build interesting stuff and virtually has no competition. But, it is so slow and need offline-patience to obtain the results. May be the MBA product manager determined that it doesn’t bring in any direct revenue and so ignore it. Bad for Yahoo, to have such attitude.

#61 nailed it.

and as posted elsewhere…..without yahoo, google becomes even more of a monoploy. and monoplies lead to stagnation. competition leads to innovation. and atr some point.

the obvious hubris of google employees and mgmnt will casue google to mis-step at some point. we need an alternative when that happens.

plus, advertisers don’t want to throw all their dollars at just one online player.

yes, yahoo has its problems, but we all of us would be worse off it didn’t exist.

#61: Amen!

@51

Yes, take the job! I love working at Yahoo!, it’s the best job I can imagine having.

As with any large company that has seen better days (and will hopefully see the best days to come), there are a number of people who reminisce about the “good old days” and bemoan how it’s not like it used to be.

But those of us who are newer employees are generally very happy to be there. I work with a lot of good people and a lot of very cool technology.

yahoo is stuck in the mud. they suck.

yhoo has one foot in the grave and the other on the banana peel. And now that they are following thru on their threat to allow random websites to gather their users yahoo id and passwords, expect for there to be thousands of cases of identity theft. yahoo is a lost cause. they cant find there way.

i hope they all get laid off. the internet would be so much better without yhoo.

I heard Yahoo is increasing its headcount in Bangalore

TO JERRY YANG & SUE DECKER
This is not complicated in the slightest: You need to get the stock price moving north again to chill the Street and boost company morale and strike prices. You do that by doing four things - refocus on Yahoo’s new core mission - a big fat RIF - do something symbolic to refocus the Street and the heads who are left - then you still need to reclaim the very soul of Yahoo!
Here’s how to do it:
1.) REFOCUS ON CORE MISSION: Announce Yahoo! is getting back to focusing on the intersection of communications, content, and technology. This annoucement will be code that the Semel fat cat era is over.
2.) A BIG FAT RIF: Then say the company has decided to reset the clock, refocus on priorities and that you are returning the company back to 2005 staffing levels of approx. 7,500 to 8,500 employees.
Be honest: A RIF of 4,000 heads - say 30% to 40% - would send the exactly right message to the Street and to the company and force everyone to prioritize EVERYTHING they do and focus on core value delivery. Anything less will look like you guys (sorry, but this really means you Sue) don’t have the guts to lead Yahoo!
How to do this? It’s focal time at Yahoo! isn’t it? A stacked ranking will do very nicely. Cut the bottom 30% on the list. Everyone gets a pro-rated severance package. Then to show you mean business and to REALLY boost the morale of everyone at Yahoo! lead by example and also do a stacked ranking of all your SVPs and VPs and slash 50% of your top heavy ranks there too.
3.) BIG AND SYMBOLIC: Announce the ride in Santa Monica is over: Point out Yahoo! never made a dime on its $50M+ (it’s more like $75M with that Lloyd Braun 6-story office building at “The Yahoo! Center” on Colorado - isn’t it?) investment there and that it was a failed distraction away from Yahoo’s core technology-enabling mission.
Then really shut down Santa Monica YMG. First slash 30% of all underperforming heads in YMG and then move the sales and marketing team to the Burbank Overture/Yahoo Search offices. For the rest of YMG, repatriate 70% of them back to Northern California.

Then you cut all other Yahoo! divisions in Sunnyvale and in Europe too by the same 30%. Search too.
Finally, close down all the layers of fat Yahoo! took on in recent years. Kill all non-essential (that means non-profitable) properties and special projects to free up resources so the company can refocus on creating core value to shareholders. KILL KILL KILL: SF Brickhouse - Berkeley Lab - Foreign labs in Argentina and Spain and China - Yahoo! Green (LOL!) - Yahoo! 360 (CRAP!) - Yahoo! Bix (YOU PAID WHAT?) - Yahoo! Kids (liked it MUCH better as education-friendly Yahooligans!) - Yahoo! Voice - and other special pet projects! Remember how TS killed all the useless TK projects? Do that.
4.) GET YOUR SOUL BACK AND GET SOME GOODWILL FLOWING YAHOO’s WAY!
You do that by announcing that Yahoo! plans to change it’s business relationship with Alibaba in China because of concerns over human rights violations there. You do that by placing your Alibaba holdings into a blind trust monitored by an independent board of directors (hire Tom Brokaw as chairman) and that you plan to revisit the company’s committments to China on an annual basis.
Then announce you are launching a $100M cash and stock-based fund for human-rights work and that the recipients are 4 non-profits (Amnesty International - International Rescue Committee - Human Right Watch - the ICRC).
Now sit back and watch the stock price hit $40 by Q4 when Jerry exits “to spend more time with his family” given he hates being CEO anyway and Sue Decker steps up as CEO.
Mr. Spin

Hi All,

Nice to see ur all thoughts about Yahoo!, as a x-yahoo employee, believe me, work, technology, talent,facility everything is ultimate in yahoo, I think the plan is to layoff highly paid employees (mgmt) from SV and they will hire some good talent from Asia. Yahoo can easily hire 3-4 employees in the salary of 1 in SV.

Hi All,

Is is good to join Yahoo Bangalore (India). How much they pay for a software engineer of 3-4 yrs experience. I want to know an approximate value only. I request you to please advice me. Will there be any layoff for Yahoo Bangalore. Please do reply me in jarc1981@gmail.com if you want to share any personal feeling. Also I request Kulkarni the reason for leaving Yahoo.

Thanks & regards
Jitendra.

as far as I know , yahoo bangalore needs more people , forget about any lay off ….

TCS is quite soft as compared to Yahoo that is laying off 1000 workers. Azim Premji should transform Wipro into a Product Company like Microsoft.

India’s labour arbitrage will gradually lessen; as Outsourcing means cutting costs primarily and quality of talent is secondary.