Michelle Chappel, who created the video above, writes in to give us her view of the fall of Yahoo from an insiders perspective:
I have a news tip about a topic you’ve covered: the Yahoo layoffs.
I’ve been a consultant/contractor at Yahoo three different times. It’s one of my favorite companies to work for–including AltaVista, Google, TiVo, and eBay–because the people are so nice there! Here is some background information on what it was like to be at Yahoo right before the fall, as well as a recount of my experience on “Layoff Day.”
The fact that Yahoo would be having another round of layoffs was first announced at a company-wide meeting an hour before Yahoo threw a huge Oktoberfest party in which beer, bratwurst and German chocolate cake were served to everyone on campus. A week later we received sparkling wine and cupcakes to celebrate a recent Developer Network (YDN) success. Many people were curious as to why so much money was being spent on these parties, not to mention the upcoming Christmas party, because Yahoo was in such dire straights.
The layoffs were preceded by a massive re-org. Suddenly we were having lots of meetings with people we’d never worked with before. The rumor going ’round was that if you were a manager with fewer than 5 reports, you’d either be demoted, or fired. One woman who lost all her reports packed up her desk weeks in advance of layoffs because she couldn’t take the pressure anymore. She’d always seemed so sure of herself before. A couple of others told me they secretly wished they’d be let go because they were sick of all the changes at Yahoo this past year. One girlfriend admitted she was very angry about it all, and that Jerry Yang had screwed up. But most people at Yahoo stayed quiet… and tried to be good… and extra dutiful… to save their jobs.
Towards the end, some of us were asked to submit reports again and again, and we all knew it was so that the powers-that-be could determine who would stay and who would go. Some people just stopped working altogether because there was nothing to do. We were pretty sure folks were going to lose their jobs on December 10th because all the classrooms had been booked on that day. But at meetings right before Thanksgiving, the date “December 10th” wasn’t even placed on timelines on whiteboards. It was as if nothing was going to happen, even though we all knew layoffs were inevitable. The VP of my division sent LinkedIn invites to all his reports in late November, so we figured that meant he was going to be asked to leave. But we weren’t sure because he was such a stellar boss. It made no sense. It was a crazy time.
On the day Yahoo was having layoffs I recorded a music video called “S**** You Yahoo”: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_Gn4soId0EM&fmt=22
It broke my heart to watch friends and co-workers worry about whether they’d lose their jobs. I wanted them to know they’re not alone, encourage them to have hope, and maybe even make them laugh a little. The video even proposes an out-of-the-box solution to our trying economic times. I used your layoff tracker and Yahoo piece (12/10/08) for the statistics in it. (Best to watch it in HD so you can read the signs.)
I hope this background information is interesting to you, and that you enjoy the music video. This song is not just about Yahoo, it’s about all companies having layoffs right now. It would be terrific if you’d consider doing a story on this to help raise people’s spirits during this economic downturn.
Happy Holidays!
Michelle
See all
Post
Yahoo 10 number
http://tinyurl.com/4rdhmc
hahaha great video. I wouldn’t be suprised if this video will be played 30-40 years from now to describe the happenings in tech in the Fall of 08. On another note, i’m lovin the optimistic posts on techcrunch the past couple days - well done!
Peter
http://www.thewebwar.com
that is for sure, i like the positive energy on techcrunch. that is why i am an avid reader.
jess
http://www.Yocial.com
Great article.
sdlfkj
Why is “screw” censored?
Pretty stupid and self-indulgent if you ask me. This is not socialism. No one owes you a living. What you are supposed to do when anyone lays you off is to find another job.
But don’t forget the taco on the way out…. Now that is better.
Haha. Taco…
Nice vid. Crappy situation.
Agreed… I hate people that complain like her, Yahoo didn’t tie her down and force her to work. What an idiot– At least the rest of the valley can see what a dumb ass she is- and can avoid hiring her now.
Accurate. If Yahoo is laying off dumb ass workers like her then they are doing the right thing.
Hey, what ever happened to that Yahoo layoff tracker. There must be a few more execs to add to that thing since its last update.
Ooooh, can’t wait until Su Decker, Hillary Schneider and the rest of the Sisterhood of Incompetent Managers is added to that thing!
video not working for me.
test
Let me just guess… those “reports” were of the “TPS” variety http://www.youtube.com/watch?v.....re=related
I before E except after C
mmmm…. weird
Not if you watched the video - first thing I noticed was that they spelled “friend” wrong.
Perhaps that explains Yahoo’s troubles.
Dumb song…dumb video…dumb post. What a yay hoo!
I feel bad for the people at Yahoo. The leadership there has pretty much been el stinko. I remember back around the last time they did massive layoffs posting that it wasn’t surprising the business was failing given that I was an advertiser who had hundreds of thousands a month to spend on PPC and couldn’t get anyone at Y to return my calls.
That money inevitably went direct into Google’s pockets.
what test
sheesh, isn’t she kinda burning some bridges with that video? Yahoo may not want her back, but what about other potential future employers seeing that video?
My thoughts exactly…. Maybe she it trying for Leno?
Just a bunch of whining if you ask me. The company hires her three times, and all she can do is tell them to screw off? Nice.
And learn to spell “freinds” if you’re gonna take the time to write up those ridiculous cue cards.
If you can’t write friends (”Freinds”) after 10 years of the TV show, then you could be laid off at yahoo, which seems ok for us.
Yahoo layoffs are the most vocal or only covered by techcrunch because it’s good to bash Yahoo. But Google laid off far more people. Most of them were angry at Google and the media never picked them up. Go figure.
Mikey must be a spurned lover… Never loses an opportunity to bash Yahoo. (Yahoo is for old people - Google is for the young and hip, Yahoo stock is down - ignore Google’s stock dive, Jerry didn’t call me in the morning - ok I made the last one up)
Mike Arrington is indeed a big whiner, and won’t blow a chance to attack Yahoo. As if Google treats contractors better. As if Yahoo doesn’t make profits quarter after quarter while most of Arrington’s darling will never make a dime.
This woman is a contractor, and those are the first to go during a downsizing. What did she expect, that they fire a fulltime employee and keep her? If anything she’s a freak. Good on you Mike to show what you’ll stoop to publish for yet another dig at Yahoo. Your credibility is zero.
As self-employed working poor I feel little sympathy with corporate types losing their job security, or home owners who see their inflated house price deflate, investors who see their paper net worth decline, babyboomers who finally discover they can’t count on a cushy retirement.
Of course they will all get bailed out one way or the other, leaving the rest of us with the tab.
Huh???? When you land your flying dragon in the rainbow clouds… let me know when I will get my bailout?
horrible song, awful company. i also feel bad for the people that still work at yahoo — the worst company online!
This isn’t specific to Yahoo, it’s about all the companies. She even apologizes at the end
“Sorry Yahoo, you just rhymed the best.”
Think of the time spent writing up the cue cards, gearing up the song, etc. All so one person could highlight a story that we all already know about.
I guess it’s really all about Michelle Chappel. What a narcissistic way to respond.
And I agree with the others…don’t you think you might be burning some bridges and/or making a fool of yourself in front of other potential clients or contractors?
Great tune Mike! Thanks!
yahoo did the right thing letting ms. chappel go
Well said.
What right do the Yahoo employees have to bitch? Microsoft was happy to acquire the company and offer all of them jobs–but noo, Microsoft wasn’t good enough for the Yahoo employees. IMHO they deserve it.
So the middle management and below got together and said… nah we don’t need no stinking Microsoft???? I believe the ones who are getting hit the hardest are the ones who heard about the Yahoo & Microsoft details the same time you did….
So Michelle’s a “International Usability Consultant and Award-winning Singer-songwriter” - that’s what her linkedin page says.
I’m assuming she’s decided to be a fulltime songwriter because after this video I don’t think ANY company in the Bay Area is going to want to hire a contractor who might just turn around and stab them in the back.
I can emphatize and employee making that video. But a consultant??? That’s pretty damn unprofessional IMHO.
I guess no one here noticed that the cue card thing is a homage to Bob Dylan’s Subterranean Homesick Blues. Possibly the first “Music Video”. I think it was a great piece of work, and I admire Michelle for pointing out that the little guy gets the shaft every time.
No Tony, we all got it. How smart did you feel posting that and how stoopid do you feel now? Have an awesome day!
Anyone else notice friends was misspelled in the video?
It was “freinds”
First thing I noticed is the word “friend” not to bright….
Your ex employer doesn’t owe you anything. You worked, you got paid. Didn’t you?
Your employer has the right to fire anyone.
You have the right to get any any job anytime.
Move on with your life.
As someone already said, this is not socialism and if you want some of it, you still have Cuba or North Korea to migrate to.
The kicker is she wasn’t even an employee! She was a contractor.
Its almost like you went out and hired an accountant to do your taxes and he goes out and makes a video on what a douchebag your are and how you suck at managing your finances.
nevertheless, it sucks to watch your employer squander away it’s opportunities time and time and time again.
That this woman was hired is part of Yahoo’s problem — she’s proof-positive that the company is squandering its resources. She is clearly not in touch with the realities of the current environment. Truly perplexing behavior. That she has been hired consistently by other Silicon Valley companies is a sad statement about the industry. This is why a recession can actually be a good thing — it’s clearly time to tighten belts and clue into reality. No company can afford to tolerate useless fluff of this woman’s message.
Here is a link for you Michelle just put on Yahoo… (Appropriate?)
Most Promising Places for a New Career:
http://hotjobs.yahoo.com/caree.....career-606
Didn’t Michelle sign any kind of NDA at Yahoo?
Video SUCKS. The chic is ugly and old. Yahoo is sexier than this chic and it is a friggin website. Give me Yahoo any day over looking at this chic and this dumb ass video
Mike I expect better shiit from you. Do not lower your standards. Next time get Loren to make a cover video or something. This video is shiit.
Really sad to hear about all these lay offs in the Bay Area. We can only hope for a turnaround soon, pls real soon.
In Sweden where I live there have been some lay offs in the IT-sector. But not as near as bad as 2001-2002. Those were bad times.
Btw, the song was a bit crappy, but yet fun and sad.
@Amanda: There’s nothing in the video that could be considered confidential information. Even if there was, NDAs aren’t very powerful in practice.
Personally, I’ve often thought Y! have been a bunch of tossers from the very early days when they thought it was a great idea using humans to categorise and index the entire web. The design of their chat client was laughably awful, they had no brand style, they seemed cheap, shallow and pointless. No wonder Google ate them alive.
But for all that, they are *still* not as shit as AOL. That company is, and will always be, the worst company ever to have soiled the Internet.
I worked at a financial services co that was a web 1.0 pioneer. After the NASD crash, it went through a similar decline and it felt at times like a death spiral.
For a few months, everything ground to a halt, people were on eggshells and it sucked to be there. Fortunately, the customer base and revenue streams were solid enough to carry the company through, because in the end, it actually did turn around.
But part of the turn around was dependent on a serious house cleaning of “good people”. At some point, the direction needs to be so different that it’s counterproductive to have people pining away for the good old days. Some of them were quite talented and those folks did fine elsewhere.
Yahoo still has some great assets, but if Yahoo is to come back, it will need a serious housecleaning, because the next version of a successful Yahoo will look a lot less like the old Yahoo than those like Jerry Yang (or Michelle for that matter) want it to.
Michelle, enjoy the free press for your band. Your actions here will eventually come back to haunt you. You left Yahoo on her own accord and you know this. I am glad to see Yahoo did not need to pay you out to leave.
Is her band’s next gig at the EDD?
Screw you, Michelle Chappel! Pathetic.
She was a CONTRACTOR–getting dumped comes with the territory.
The part about all the rooms being booked is an urban myth–they weren’t.
As a current Yahoo employee, I don’t think the layoffs were done any better or worse than any of the other layoffs I’ve been through at companies over the years.
She sounds like one of those dead-weight contractors they got rid of. And publicly slamming one of your “favorite” companies is pretty stupid. IMHO.
OK. I watched the whole video. When it turned colour she did not look so bad for an old chick. She even begun to sexy in the end as she knows how to dance and shake her ass. Not bad.
Awesome! Love the video!
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Yahoo should have allowed microsoft take over, but …
I’m the bass player, getting y’alls collective knickers in a twist was the point … thanks…
Did she get laid off for spelling friends incorrectly?
From: Michelle Millis-Wright
Date: Wed, 26 Nov 2008
To: [...]
Subject: good-bye
Hi all,
Today is my last day at Yahoo. I just wanted to thank everyone for making the experience here so enjoyable for me. You’re the nicest people I’ve ever worked with anywhere. As some of you know (and have already heard), I wrote a song for you to say “good-bye”. [...] wants to record it next week and said he’d send it out.
I hope some of you will be able to make it to my CD Release party on Jan 24 at the Sonoma Chicken Coop in downtown Campbell (http://www.myspace.com/michellechappelshine). That way I know I’ll see you again.
Thanks again, and have a great Thanksgiving!
Take care!
Michelle
wow, terrible terrible song. sorry. but someone has to be honest here.
no offense, but you would have to be blind to not have seen this coming, for MONTHS AND MONTHS. If you stuck around and are now bitching you really have no one to blame but your stubborn self. My friend left Yahoo! 9 months ago and told me it was in shambles then. FIO.
She has nice legs!
This is great! Perfect. And accurate to boot.
Yeah, things were re-orged. Again. With not much explanation. Now the answer is clear: to shift jobs abroad.
Some people found that all their projects suddenly went dark, disappeared into a black hole. (More so than normal.) Managers wouldn’t say why things were being delayed. Employees were suddenly given a lot of bullshit work to do that wasn’t very important so when they were laid off nothing would be missed. One friend in another department told me that there was a sudden surge in training. People who stayed were trained on things that those about to be laid off people were already trained on.
It was all pretty obvious and cold, but the one thing about Yahoo is that the managers all think that nobody notices what they’re actually doing and are too cowed to really confront them on it. The latter is true enough. But, they’re really not as clever as they know that they’re not.
Good luck to them. They’ve now got a devastated staff that’s far too terrified to give them any honest feedback on anything. That’s a recipe for disaster.
Yes, Bernie, they knew it was coming. But not this bad. And where were they going to go?
She actually was a GREAT worker. I worked with her there and got the boot also. I was high payed and very senior. The layoffs were all about budget. Sad. They even cleared our mail box’s 2 weeks prior. Talk about a sign. Great move Y!
Surprise, surprise… so you got the boot too. Clearly, spelling and punctuation are not criteria for being hired at Yahoo. While I’m sure you and Michelle were probably good “freinds” at Yahoo, this doesn’t entitle you to be “high payed” without contributing any real value. I think those pinks slips in your “mail box’s” were long overdue!
That’s why I hate consultants. They will spit into the well from which they have no problem drinking from until the water is gone. Zero loyalty.
Mediocre melody. Stupid lyrics. She looks stupid in the video. And she is ugly. She could have put an attractive actress instead of her over-the-hill self.
BTW, I am not a big Yahoo fan either, and I thing Jerry has more luck that brain. But this wannabe should stick to consulting.
This is pathetic. Why do people think they are entitled to a job?? Should companies continue to pay their mediocre employees while revenue and profits are down? It’s a public company, not a charity, for crying out loud. Want a life-long job where you don’t have to work hard and continue to get raises every year until you retire? Try your local government or USPS.
Even the government is running out of money, so that’s not a great be either. Especially if that government happens to be the State of California: http://www.newsmax.com/us/Cali.....60240.html
(BTW I’m not the same Tony who “admires Michelle” (above) - just for the record)
interesting video, kinda easy to understand after the first 10 seconds
no attempt to identify issues more than just plain old victimhood
no mention of jerry yang, others
Merry Christmas Michelle
http://thinkbillions.blogspot.com/