Silicon Alley Insider is reporting that Yahoo is preparing to lay off up to 20% of its 14,000 strong workforce, a big purge as the Sunnyvale based company attempts to become more profitable.
Talks of staff downsizing at Yahoo have been doing the rounds since former CEO Terry Semel left Yahoo in June.
Despite traffic to Yahoo properties remaining ahead of Google (according to comScore), YHOO stock has performed poorly over the last twelve months months as the company has failed to convert that traffic to strong profit growth, unlike Google.
SAI’s source claims that the move is about improving the outlook for Yahoo and strengthening its position so it can remain a standalone company by increasing the share price. We don’t know directly but this seems to be logical reasoning. There will be a lot of Yahoo employee’s who will not be enjoying their Martin Luther King holiday long weekend now this news has leaked.
If you’re working for Yahoo and know more, drop us a line.
Update (Arrington): I’ve been on a plane all day, but have some additional facts on this (we were holding the story until early this week per our source’s request): The layoffs will be 10%-20% and are being recommended by the executive team after a recent offsite. The board will make the final decision at a meeting two days before the next earnings call on January 29. Layoffs will likely be announced then.
20% = 2400 folks - that sucks! I wonder how many of them will land in the GooglePlex? Probably not many since they will let go the fat and not the meat. I’m guessing not only Yahoo will be laying people off in 2008. Smells like a mini 2000 is coming.
An irrelevant question this, nevertheless, Star Wars, Far Cry, Crysis, Sim City 4, and World of Warcraft have something common between them as far as their logic & design go. What?
Thank goodness we have the Google.
yes there were news about the Yahoo answers team at the US being shutdown and people asked to move in to other yahoo teams if possible.If the succesful answers team has met this fate then its tough to imagine the fate for other guys…….in the non performing product teams……
Of late I get the feel Yahoo is caught in a loop trying to turn the corner. There were some big ticket acquisitions, a few deadpool entries…now a huge staff cut…let’s hope in the interest of having some competition for the Googs (laughter here) that this is it!
Duncan,
What new perspective does this post add to the conversation?
I’m having trouble seeing it.
Please advise.
Why don’t they lay off customer service? Wait, they can’t because they don’t have any.
David
it’s a big story that’s worth covering, or are you suggesting that we should totally ignore massive layoffs at Yahoo? It’s not my story as per the links in the post, sometimes you don’t get it first and you link out on the big stuff. End of story.
SAI has been making noise about Yahoo layoffs for some time now. They were more or less correct in their call on AOL layoffs, they could be right this time too.
I think what duncan’s trying to say is that there is no news.
10
try telling that to the over 2000 ppl at Yahoo who may be shown the door in the next two weeks
Downsizing, refocusing, and consolidation. All the elements of a big player that’s lost it’s way and will eventually be gobbled up. As a yahoo shareholder, I think it is time to break it all up and sell. That’s the only way I see shareholders benefiting.
Meanwhile, the guy most responsible for the current mess, Terry Semel, remains as chairman of the board. He’s done nothing in the last year but cash in stock options for millions of dollars of profits.
Jerry, if you have any ball at all, you would have completely fired this asshole last year.
This could be good news for startups (like us), who are looking for designers, developers, managers, etc. Granted there’s lots of competition to hire top talent, and most of these folks would rather go to another salaried job than a pre-launch, pre-salary bootstrap startup. But for those who are sick of being at the mercy of pointy-haired bosses who who, will toss you to the curb if they think it will increase the stock price, starting fresh and from scratch, at a place where your own hard work (and a little luck) will determine your success, not some Wall Street analyst or executive who listens to them, can be exactly what is wanted. Cheers.
Wow, 20% is a large cut to make. Its too bad for all the families involved. I wonder if/how this will affect Yahoo as a business.
Whole companies got scared. Even President of United States. You will see lot of job cuts in 2008.
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/.....refer=home
Most companies need to place lot of unemployee workers & homeless people. Inside IRS super computer. Social security isn’t perfect score. No one want to have kids anymore.
You will lots of new houses, school, buildings, etc. No one is buying it.
Check this out. Sooo scary.
http://news.google.com/news?hl.....employment
How does U.S homeless people get a job without corporate suit?
Well, hire more illegal mexicans without SS#.
@14… Yeap, he said it right.
Baby boomers want us to have more kids. LOL. You will see lots of houses that homeless people can’t afford it. It’s very nice economy suicide mission.
@6 David:
This provides the perspective (to me at least) that you are a moron. Not everybody has the time to read every blog and get this story from someplace else.
If this article wasn’t published here, you wouldn’t have had the opportunity to post your silly comment.
A lot of new startups are going to come out of this event.
If layoffs work to pump up YHOO’s share price, than maybe ebay, cisco, sun, and other valley companies could be next in line.
For those of you run startups. You have be careful hiring interviewers. Sometime they can be very dishonest, discrimate innocent over exprience.
1. it doesn’t matter what color human is.
2. You company can turn into Enron if you hired greedy & exprience.
3. you goal is create company that is richer than Saudi’s oil.
4. Microsoft have 95% millioanires.
Can you beat number #4?
Yahoo’s been needing a shakeup for years. Jerry should have announced a 10% cut on his first day with a goal of executing the layoff within 60 days.
Nothing gets a “coaster” into action faster than the possibility of losing their free ride…
Probably none of those laid off are going to end up at Google. Everyone says that Google’s already interviewed and rejected half the Yahoos in SV.
Silicon valley guy, that’s whether the arrogance of a google boy or the jealousy of a guy working for a small company…
Yahoo sucks. I can’t remember the last time I used a Yahoo service.
- I use yahoo mail as my SPAM email
- Yahoo maps is bloated. Even ask.com is better
- Flickr is overrated and slow. Use photobucket
- Yahoo finance is good, but still, nothing special
- yahoo video doesn’t work all the time with my leopard + FF
on top of that, yahoo’s employees are arrogant.
Jerry yang is not my favorite person in the world either
This is in response to bubble head…
The other companies you mentioned are not laying off people. they make good profits.
Getting laid off is never a good thing. However, for the benefit of the shareholders and the long term viability of the company, it is long overdue. I’m rooting for Jerry to set this ship straight and bring relevance back to Yahoo in the internet world. Competition brings innovation. Monopolies bring stagnation.
Yahoo has some great services - so many parts that could add up to more than the whole if they ever got their act together. I wonder how cutting their way to innovation is going to work? Or maybe it makes Yang look like he’s doing something?
Duncan,
I’m just saying I’m surprised you are not asserting an opinion about the subject. Usually you are not one to lack an opinion and I was surprised to not find new information on this story when clicking on this from techmeme - even if it was just your opinion.
That’s all. Peace.
12000 total work force is not too much to be at number 1 and 2 in most of the online services. It simply means that either those people are getting fired due to their performance or Yahoo has ceased to innovate. It might be an overhaul tactic also. Getting rid of some old timers and on boarding some Facebook or Google guys!! Who would come and join. This will hurt yahoo’s reputation.
Yahoo absolutely sucks. You don’t have to be a silicon valley ‘insider’ to see that yahoo has been stuck in the mud for years now. there services are subpar, cluttered, filled with ads, difficult to navigate and completely worthless. They are trying to be everything to everyone and look where it has gotten them. I use yahoo mail as my throwaway email account. The 20% layoffs make sense and it’s probably going to prove to be yet another desparate move as yahoo falls into the abyss.
Hmmm, not a good sign..
I agree with #30. A friend who works at Yahoo tells me that the mood in sunnyvale is constantly somber, sluggish and borderline depressing. She tells me that employees walk around like zombies knowing that they are working for a outdated, outgrown internet company.
She has also told me that some of the people in sunnyvale refer to Yahoo as the Titanic. Its a huge ship that once dominated the ocean but now slowly sinking into oblivion.
If its true that its 20% of the workforce then thats a very huge number. It also brings up the question as to why they ended up with so many ‘excess’ staff in the first place in order to get of a fifth of them just like that. Were they expecting tremendous growth that never came? Maybe.
so sad. i feel bad for the yahoo employees who will be sent packing. my neighbor worked for yahoo for nearly 5 years and he also told me all of things that kyle said in #32. Apparently there is no spirit in sunnyvale. I guess its hard to get excited when your company keeps sinking deeper in the quicksand.
Very Sad. But i am sure all those working at Yahoo are Smart
With the Venture funding reaching 1Billion in 2007, it will not be hard for them to find new jobs. As there are lot of new startups here in the valley
Just wait for Yahoo to join Microsoft. Am sure they will be bought sooooon.
Cheers, Nag
It was my understanding that they will replace these American workers with asian or europian workers. They are dumping the people and country that made them for their own benefit. I refuse to use Yahoo and any other company (if possible) that has abandoned ship.
Yea Nag. With unemployment going up, up, up and up should be no problem for another 20,000 or so to find a job. “Welcome to K-Mart”
I just pray that they are not disgruntled employee’s looking to get back at Yahoo? They have sensitive data on all of us?
This is a trend. Wehn a company grow, they hire a lot of worker and when company suffer or stable then cut job or move job to Asia.
I don’t trust yahoo. I hope that they realize they will never be what they were 10 years ago. The internet has evolved and continued to develop while Yahoo stands still and can’t tell it’s head from it’s ass hole. The lack of enthusiasm in Sunnyvale is apparent in the crappy products that Yahoo has put out recently. Nothing but half-baked ideas that go nowhere fast, or should i say they go to hell in a handbasket.
Now that we all know how desparate Yahoo has become, it wouldnt surprise me if they go out and sell all of the personal information that they have on their users. Selling the names, email addresses, and credit cards of their 500 million user data base would be incredibly lucrative.
Don’t do it Yahoo. Keep your dignity and go out with your head held high.
As a yahoo user, I don’t think things are so bad to Yahoo, why do so many people jump so high to say a ship is going to sink, is that good to you, or you just like to see ppl to suffer, or you are just happy to THINK they are suffering?
I still and always love Yahoo.
HG
Agree with #42, Yahoo still provides great services.
Well this says 2 things….
either you will be the first person to be kicked off or you have your safe Ass in the mgmt
HG - Does this mean Hale Gandu….(I am just doing the part of THINKING you highlighted)
Ur Boss
Just look at the moral of the Y workforce. Everybody is sneaking around trying to ‘look buzy’ and avoid responsibility for failures. The problem is that there is no leadership and no accountability. Even if Jerry had the Balls, (which he probably does) then he still would not be able to execute due to the all the lard laying around.
#35 Nag
“Very Sad. But i am sure all those working at Yahoo are Smart”
—————————————-
Give me a break, the fact is:
Most of those (not all) working at Yahoo are dumb heads.
Courtesy of finance.yahoo.com (http://finance.yahoo.com/q/it?s=YHOO), it looks like good ol’ Terry Semel pocketed around $100MM after his departure in June of last year (I admit I eyeballed the numbers and added them in my head). At a fully-loaded cost of $200k/employee, that means his options sales cost Yahoo the salaries of 500 employees for one year. It’s sad how badly he screwed up Y!…the missed opportunities (acquisitions — Google, Facebook mainly) and then the poor execution (search, monetization, being relevant as a business) and now he still torments Sunnyvale with his profiteering. Sick.
What i’m looking forward to most is seeing the spin that the Yahoo executive team puts on this bleak, pathetic situation
Anyone who says Yahoo is doing just great needs to pull there head out of their butt!
Yahoo! and their lazy employees suck! Otherwise they would be posting profits and showing growth rather than disappointing investors every quarter and laying off their ‘hard-working’ workforce.
Working for a very well-known company here in Silicon Valley (not Google or Yahoo), it is absolutely incredible to see how many current Yahoo employees submit their resumes and are trying their hardest to escape the Titanic!
@48 — Yahoo employees aren’t lazy. As someone from the inside, I can tell you that the people I work with — at the individual contributor level — are generally hard working and talented. The problem with the company is, and has been for the last 6-7 years, poor management at the higher levels. A lazy or incompetent individual contributor can do some damage, but the damage is 1000x at the VP level. At the CEO level, it’s downright deadly. Unfortunately for Yahoo there has been so much mismanagement at the top (CEO, SVP, VP) that the hard work and execution at the individual contributor level becomes irrelevant.