So it’s obviously no surprise that Yahoo is in trouble right now and people are leaving in droves. That’s why I was so surprised to hear one of my candidates tell me that he’s currently inerviewing with Yahoo right now. WHAT!! Why is he interviewing with Yahoo? It’s like somebody jumping on board Titanic mid sink. He said that this can possibly be a special time to join Yahoo because they are putting all of their resources into making one last stand to avoid a sale to Microsoft. Excuse my French, but that’s the biggest bunch of BULLSHIT I’ve ever heard in my life. I would be willing to bet that the same manager who is trying to recruit this candidate is turning right around and taking a call from somebody like me about his next potential career opportunity. Not sure if anybody else has noticed, but isn’t it interesting how every single manager’s resume is out on the internet and their LinkedIn profiles are suddenly detailed and updated. I tried to avoid going on a rant, but I just couldn’t help myself. I’ll keep you posted on this situation and will for sure rant some more of this guy actually decides to join Yahoo. But in the spirit of people leaving Yahoo, we thought we’d compile a list of reasons that Yahooligans are interested in leaving the company. I thought others might find this interesting. If you are leaving Yahoo for one of these reasons, please let me know. If you are leaving Yahoo for a different reason, I’d love to add it to the list. If you’re one of the guys at Yahoo trying to put up your last stand, I’d love to hear about your reasons. It might make for a nice post about why somebody might want to stay at Yahoo.Obviously these reasons below aren’t our specific opinions as nobody here at BINC has ever worked for Yahoo. They are opinions of the hundreds of Yahoo employees we’ve had the opportunity to speak with over the past few months that we’ve compiled into a nice neat top 9 list.
1. Don’t agree with Microsoft/Yahoo potential merger and don’t want any part of it. - There was a posting on Techyouruniverise.com, written by a current yahoo employee. He goes into detail about why Yahoos won’t go to work for Microsoft.
Key reason #1 - Microsoft is anti open-source, Yahoo! utilizes open source technologies extensively.
Key reason #2 - Microsoft is evil, Yahoo! is not.
Key reason #3 - Microsoft technologies suck.
2. Yahoo’s product is 2 years behind the competition in terms of technical and product innovation. There are companies literally down the street from Yahoo that are leading in innovation in areas like groups, mobile, community - but for some reason, Yahoo can’t get their resources together to lead any sort of innovation in these areas.
3. Bureaucracy has made it incredibly difficult to make an impact and to actually get things done, innovation is squashed internally. ValleyWag had a great article about this:
The only thing that’s clear is many people in the upper rungs at Yahoo need to be fired as they continuously just get in the way of development by talking and not building,” says the tipster. What I’d like to know is what some of these great ideas were. If they’re brought into the light of day, I believe, Yahoo management might actually be shamed into greenlighting them.
4. Job stability – Recent Yahoo Layoffs, in the recent months employment at Yahoo! has become very unstable. At the end of January they announced that they would be laying off 1,000 employees. According to CNETnews.com a spokeswoman for Yahoo said:
We’re making these targeted reductions in areas of our business that don’t support our critical growth initiatives
5. Want to be at a smaller company where they can wear many hats, not just be stuck doing one thing.
6. Yahoo has lost its focus. They are chasing innovators like Google and Microsoft and don’t have ay sort of corporate vision anymore. They became too big and lost their identity.
7. Ever since Microsoft Offer stock prices went up and are going back down.
8. Poor Management. Yahoo employs the epitiamy of the middle-manager. There seems to be an endless chain of managers reporting to managers and so on with nobody having any sort of any major decision-making abilities that can truly make a difference.
9. Employees are expected to work night, weekends and holidays because product specifications are changed on a whim. Valleywag had a posting on why it sucks to work at yahoo. In the comments a ex-yahoo employees stated that they are expected to work at all hours of the day and even night.
