We have been tracking the exodus of employees from Yahoo and have counted 114 executive-level departures since January 2007. The news isn’t going to get any better as we have learnt that of the executives remaining at the company, a large number of them are biding their time and waiting for a large vesting period that finishes up in the first week of August, the same time as the critical annual shareholder meeting.
The options grant was part of a retention initiative at Yahoo! and involved almost every employee at the company - from top executives down to the engineering level. Employees were granted options and restricted stock units based on merit. Grants ranged from 10,000 to up to 40,000 options with a vesting period of two years. These options are potentially worth up to $200,000 for some employees - certainly enough incentive for some who intended to leave to wait around a few more months before taking that new job with a startup, or Google or Microsoft. We understand that there are dozens and possibly up to another 100 people in director, VP level or higher positions who are ready to leave once this vesting period has completed in a few weeks time.
Yahoo has long had a retention problem, and they are known to pay higher base salaries and ocassionaly write out bonus options in an effort to retain employees. They also ran a very visible recruitment campaign until recently when they initiated a hiring freeze. Our list of executives who have left the company could easily double in the next month - and another mass exodus would not bode well for the morale of the remaining employees and executives.
We understand that some of these remaining executives are only coming into the office a day or two a week, and openly searching for new jobs with competitors or other companies. The image gives a good idea of just how tough the situation inside Yahoo! is at the moment - and the challenges facing upper management with their attempts to turn the company around without the help of Microsoft.
The funny thing is that if this continues MS won’t have to buy Yahoo! anymore. If each ex Y! executive that jumps ship to MS brings one line of code with them they’ll soon have the whole product line transferred.
Yahoo is not hiring, as far as I know. Not massively, at least.
Peter, MS wants the users base, not code. BTW, are you hiring a biz guy before your ship sinks?
Yahoo in caught in the vicious cycle of survival. It is eating itself to keep itself alive..Its a pity that such a great company which affected and changed the lives of so many peopl around the world has to land in such a situation.
Human resource is the biggest resource and if Yahoo loses it, nothing can save it from annihilation..
Really! You should really stop speaking through your arse or your ‘informant’ should.
Not sure I get this. 99% of time options are priced at the level of the stock when options are granted. Yahoo hasn’t seen $9 bucks in a long time.
@ Frank Church
Thanks for letting me know about MS’s true motives behind the deal
Re Biz Guy. Do you mean Smibs Inc in terms of ship sinking? Well it’s not off the dry dock yet, so no danger of sinking so far. But I am sure we’ll find someone smart that does a better job then me once we’re afloat.
Could this posting have more typos and grammatical errors? I understand the expedience of the web, but come on… TechCrunch is supposed to be a top site and should have a copy editor around.
Aside from that, the story sounds plausible. We’ll see…
these yahoo postings, like your twitter postings, are getting quite old and dry…think of something new to write about please
This is actually not a bad thing. Yahoo really needs a culture change. As long as JY can weather the storm, he could use this opportunity to turn around and change the culture of Yahoo.
Six years of Terry has created a political and sluggish culture. If Yahoo wants to be a player they need fresh blood of can-do people who are willing to take chances and try out things.
As a new Yahoo! employee, one of over 100 in the past month that started there, Yahoo! is definitely hiring, and nobody under the executive level is really too concerned about the circus you guys are running.
So I’m a little confused by this.
Hiring freeze? Then why are new people starting every day?
Stock options at 9 bucks? These are very mysterious options indeed!
Turn the company around? Then how come yahoo beat analyst expectations last quarter?
How tough the situation is? What a load of crap. Quite a few people at yahoo love their jobs. The only thing that’s tough is constantly hearing the company badgered in the press.
Now I respect the whole “blogging is not journalism” thing, and you don’t have to be able to back up anything you say here, but come on. If you’re right, you can say you were right. If you’re wrong…oh well, you’re just a blog, huh?
Why does this strike me as deliberate attempts to destabilize confidence before the shareholder meeting? It’s no secret Arrington is a VC. Does he have special interest in seeing a Microsoft deal go through? Would he profit?
wow, the math is broken in this article. how is this readable?
There’s always a chance that Microsoft will make another bid for Yahoo.
a) Is there news or point in this post?
b) Y! is #1 in 10 online categories and #2 in another 10 - anyone else out there come close to that???
c) Internal morale is nowhere near as bad as MA would love to think - seems odd he only talks to people who have left or are leaving… name one exec that has left recently that accomplished something while at Y! — why is it so surprising that these people are being managed out and not attempted to retain when they want to leave? - because most of them sucked
d) Name any recent Y! exec that left that ever ahd success at any other web company or for that matter any expreince at any other web company… Semel brought in trash and was trash himself
e) MA loves a tradegy - hes as cheap as the lcoal news
Yahoo! is hiring big time in India ….
I hope this doesn’t affect my email.
I keep intending to make lists of what I use various email addresses for so when they go deadpool (in the vernacular) I can switch stuff to other addresses.
You ass clowns. Many people have already pointed out that those aren’t over a hundred executive. You just labeled everybody with a title, even a team lead of 2 people or director of none as an executive.
Also, most of these so called executives should be fired/downsized as Yahoo sheds useless products and employees, such as TechCrunch’s beloved Garlinghouse.
Yahoo hasn’t lost money in a single quarter, and even in its weakest quarter it makes more money than most of the idiotic companies TechCrunch loves (twatter anybody?) who have no business plan and will never make a dime.
Yahoo has also more users than the majority of the sites out there in any product niche, and definitely beats Microsoft on all web categories. The only company desperate here is Microsoft, which most likely pays a bonus to TechCrunch for peddling the anti-Yahoo jihad. It’s standard Microsoft operation, and your idiotic analysis confirms it.
Yea…not sure about the credibility of this article. Yahoo’s stock has been taking a beating (before and after MS’ offer). So the majority of options are underwater anyway leaving them completely worthless. I have options that will never be worth anything.
That being said…morale inside of Yahoo isn’t so bad. Noone I work with really cares about the news. Some people I know have left but that’s really not that out of the norm (this IS a tech company).
Generally speaking the engineers still get to work on really cool products which are used by more people on the web than any other site. That’s what keeps them happy…and they aren’t that affected by the news.
I get contacted on a daily basis about other jobs. I’m not a Yahoo fanboy but I enjoy my work and those I work with…and I know Yahoo isn’t going anywhere…so it’s all good.
Anyways, back to my original thought…the math in this article…is beyond not making sense. The RSUs have value but definitely not any options.
Yahoo is still a great company, brand and provides great services to the consumer!
Who said you were a tech top 100? It seems you like a lot of soap opera!! It’s either Yahoo bashing or 1938 media day.
Today is my last! Dropping you on RSS, Twitter, etc, etc!
I wonder how much TechCrunch publishing these articles perpetuates these ideas. If I worked at yahoo and I heard that the whole company was falling apart, I’d probably start looking for a new job too (No offense TechCrunch. I’m not saying that this the whole reason for it, just that it plays into it to some degree).
“Yahoo has long had a retention problem, and they are known to pay higher base salaries and ocassionaly write out bonus options in an effort to retain employees. They also ran a very visible recruitment campaign until recently when they initiated a hiring freeze.”
-curious as to where this came from? it’s not the experience I nor others I know who have worked there have had. There is always the lure of Google perks (which seem to be on their way out the door) and/or “hot new stock options” a la Facebook, but in my experience yahoo hasn’t had any more difficult time than any other company to hire and retain (Sun, MSFT, IBM, HP, Ebay, etc)
it seems a shame that after reading the comments, the general opinion is that this article is a load of tabloid rubbish. techcrunch, pull your socks up and start writing stories I can trust. Otherwise the next tabloid headline you’ll be writing will read: “Techcrunch victim to its own DEADPOOL”
ranking messages is cool subject to comment about, but what about Yahoo?
dead weight leaving is always a good thing
this shud be good for yahoo. all the execs shud be fired. there are wat like 500 of them at yahoo.
well, I don’t know who is leaving and who is not there from the Yahoo executives, but one thing is for sure, many developers from Yahoo are looking for jobs outside of Yahoo right now. I am talking with recruiters that represent senior Yahoo developers every week. Too bad that we do our development in Bulgaria where we pay a fraction of what we would if we were doing it here.
Also, if you are an executive working for Yahoo in the marketing or sales and are looking for a new job, Blogtronix is hiring right now.
So Arrington’s new ploy is to have his articles posted by another author. And at the same time try to write at least one anti-MS post to gain his credibility back.
@Vince and Techcrunch,
Yes yahoo is hiring, I know this for a fact.
Lets face it - Michael Arrington is not good at either being a lawyer or being a blogger. His staff seems equally incompetent.
This freedom of speech goes too far sometimes. Bad bloggers like Arrington should be ‘laid off’ too! There are many people like him who have come into the valley to cash in…its time to throw them out!
Oh and yeah, Arrington - you look fat. Maybe its time you stop running your stupid blog and get a few rounds on the treadmill instead.
“from top executives down to the engineering level.”
Wow. I’ve never felt so pathetic to be down at the “engineering level”.
@Terrell K - ok, you don’t like the post, that’s fine, but why you got to be such a dick about it?
I work at Yahoo! Know lots of the folks who left, and I think most of them are great. They will do well at their next gigs.
That said, Yahoo! would be even better off if twice as many execs left. There are just too many of them, and the more that leave the better off the company will be. Again, nothing against these people personally. It’s just that Yahoo! would be better off with a much smaller percentage of managers.
And speaking for the folks I know and work with, morale is just fine. Though a higher stock price definitely wouldn’t hurt
Nik Cubrilovic? Who is this clown? This article is complete and utter crap. “Employees were granted options of 10,000-40,000″? Are you joking? Yahoo has probably not granted that many options to ‘employees’ (I’m assuming you’re meaning ALL employees as it’s written) since probably the late 90’s.
Two year vesting? No such thing.
And even if the above were all true, they’d be underwater.
How do people like this author get jobs? Or keep them?
For #15 Yahoo employee…
What does it say about Yahoo! if they’re hiring these worthless people to begin with? You say he’s only talking to the ppl that sucked and were fired. That they came over with nothing…Then why were they hired? The person that said without a good Human Resource unit.. they’re gonna sink or implode or whatever words they used.. they’re right. Don’t hire someone to begin with that doesn’t perform.
The sooner this thing is settled,the better for both parties involved. Good luck to both; you both are part of what’s good in the world!
I wonder just *how* do bloggers manage to come out with baseless (and I might add, lacking any factual substance) articles? Yahoo! is one of the most globally recognized brands and will be for decades to come. And about the company morale, I don’t see *anything* wrong when I go to work (at Yahoo!) everyday!!