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It's incredibly sad when something like this happens. And I sure hope anyone who's found themselves out of a job, success in finding another. Even the "lower pe
by nobleach 11y ago
It's incredibly sad when something like this happens. And I sure hope anyone who's found themselves out of a job, success in finding another. Even the "lower performers" still need to work. What I do hope for Yahoo, is that they're taking a solid look at who they consider expendable. Are self-important big shots also losing their jobs? Or are they too important to fire? When I see any company start to get rid of their engineering workforce, and keep all their managers, I get very concerned. It's a testament to how important these people think they are.
As for Marissa, I wonder how easy it'll be for her to find a job. "I bought Tumblr, I threw lavish parties when we really couldn't afford it... my company was about to go under until someone purchased it... BUT, I did get people to stop working from home!". "Hire me?"
Edit - Marissa, not Melissa.
- xenihn 11y agoHow many tens of millions is she guaranteed to walk away with again? Does she really need to ever work again? Hell, will her children?
- deleted 11y ago[deleted]
- lisper 11y ago> Melissa Marissa > I wonder how easy it'll be for her to find a job Marissa's net worth is well into nine figures. I wouldn't worry about her too much. And she can always run for president as a Republican.
- nobleach 11y agoOh dear, you are correct. My thoughts seem to outrun my fingers from time to time. Marissa. Yes, I hear this idea that once someone has made this much money that they are fine just stepping out of the game and living off their earnings. But one doesn't stay a part of the Triple Comma Club™ if they spend like she was spending as CEO. (without some sort of replenishment)
- morgante 11y ago> But one doesn't stay a part of the Triple Comma Club™ if they spend like she was spending as CEO. (without some sort of replenishment) Her net worth is around $300 million. I'm sure she could maintain her spending habits off interest alone.
- tptacek 11y agoThat's a much more fun thing to say than "person tasked with impossible job fails to do the impossible". From the comments on this part of the thread, you'd think Yahoo was some kind of Internet colossus before Mayer took their reins, rather than an overgrown relic kept alive and profitable through sheer inertia.
- lisper 11y agoImpossible? Yahoo had gross income of $4.6B in 2014. That is one hell of a cash flow stream. I find it very hard to believe that turning that into a profitable venture again would violate the laws of either physics or economics. I think a much more likely explanation is that Marissa failed because she brought no new ideas to the table, and also made a whole bunch of boneheaded blunders like this: http://gawker.com/5987043/yahoo-ceo-marissa-mayer-installed-a-nursery-in-her-office http://gawker.com/5987043/yahoo-ceo-marissa-mayer-installed-... and this: http://nypost.com/2016/01/18/marissa-mayers-job-safety-joke-doesnt-sit-well-with-workers/ http://nypost.com/2016/01/18/marissa-mayers-job-safety-joke-... while she unashamedly pocketed $36M for her first six months worth of work.
- tptacek 11y agoIt had a top-line of 4.6B, but 1.2B in fixed costs and a little over 3B in payroll expenses. Yahoo's problems have absolutely nothing to do with Mayer having a "nursery" put into her office. She could have taken minimum wage and no other compensation, and no part of this story would have turned out differently, except they might have sold the company by now. Arguments about Mayer's performance on threads like these are frustrating because the consensus (elsewhere, not here) seems to be that her first order of business should have been a significant layoff. But at this point, now that we have lurid stories about logos, nurseries, and poorly-timed jokes, there's no winning: their core business has been on a downward trajectory since long before she took over, and nobody believes they're appropriately staffed. Later For what it's worth, if you look at what I'm saying, nowhere am I claiming that Mayer is a good CEO. But I have doubts as to whether a good CEO could have done much to change the outcome here, except perhaps by fetching a better price at auction for Yahoo.
- jazzyk 11y agoShe has organized fund-raising events for the Democratic Party (Hillary, I think)
- dominotw 11y ago>As for Melissa, I wonder how easy it'll be for her to find a job. There are only so many logo tweaking jobs.
- benevol 11y agoTechnology eating technology. It's only a "surprise" for a society that does not yet understand to what degree technology is about to create power monopolies of unseen magnitude. In principle, Google could become the Internet. Oh wait...
- brianmcconnell 11y agoShe never has to work another day in her life. She'll do just fine. The older workers who are being shitcanned and forced into involuntary early retirement, however, do not have that luxury.
- henrikschroder 11y agoSeriously, if you've ever worked at a large company in SV, you should know that the "lavish parties" thing was a completely envy-driven red herring. If you do the math you realize that the holiday party cost a few hundred bucks per attending employee. Compared to other large SV companies - that are not under fire in the press - this was a cheap holiday party.
- eitally 11y agoI dunno. Can you show examples of more lavish holiday parties? For one, there aren't that many SV companies of similar size. Secondly, a lot of the ones of similar size aren't WWW/software companies, and they have a lot slimmer margins anyway.
- phamilton 11y agoTubemogul threw a ridiculous party in 2014. My neighbor was the event planner. I wouldn't be surprised if the cost per employee was way higher than Yahoo's.
- jqm 11y agoA few hundred bucks per attending employee for a Christmas party is a lot by most working people's standards... probably like 12x + what their company would spend.
- henrikschroder 11y agoYes, by most people's standards, which is why the piece is working, it creates envy in a lot of people. Same with the "free food" spiel. But Yahoo is competing for Silicon Valley software engineers, and perks are very common, so if you don't have free food, free snacks, office parties, events, and other benefits, you'll have to pay your employees a lot more. Perks are incredibly cheap for the company, because people value them much more than they would the corresponding pay raise. So if you don't understand this, it looks bad that company "wastes" millions on perks, because you don't see the many more millions it saves on salary.
- gaius 11y agoAlso see http://www.nytimes.com/2016/02/02/technology/yahoo-employee-ranking-system-lawsuit.html?action=click&contentCollection=Opinion&module=MostPopularFB&version=Full®ion=Marginalia&src=me&pgtype=article http://www.nytimes.com/2016/02/02/technology/yahoo-employee-...
- deleted 11y ago[deleted]
- spikels 11y agoTumblr gets little respect but it was one of the better purchases Yahoo made. It actually generates revenue. Many of the others were shut down months later with neither revenue, talent or technology to show for it.
- meat_fist 11y agoDo you have a source for this? I can only find posts from several years ago saying Tumblr will soon be profitable.
- spikels 11y agoAbout a year ago Yahoo said they expected Tumblr to generate $100 million in revenue (not profit) in 2015. I'm not saying Tumblr is profitable (don't think they ever said) or it was a great investment (cost $1.1B in 2013) but at least it generates significant revenue and uniques have around doubled since they bought it. That was a RELATIVELY good purchase.
- tptacek 11y agoThere's also the strategic issue: if you believe Yahoo has to have a foot in "social"† to remain relevant and continue commanding the ad dollars from search and their site network, Tumblr was probably the most credible social network they could have bought; they got it for $1.2B. Who else could they have bought? † for want of better term
- skuhn 11y agoThat $100mm target was not achieved last year. I don't know what sort of revenue Tumblr actually generated in 2015 for Yahoo, but it seemingly wasn't $100mm and it definitely is nowhere near profitable. A few points: - Tumblr was reorganized and lost its independence [1]. Not a sign of happiness with their progress. - Tumblr has an enormous third-party CDN bill, to the extent that even $100mm of yearly revenue wouldn't come close to covering the expanse. Their traffic levels are greater than those of some entire CDN providers, and the rates they negotiated were not particularly rock bottom. Yahoo has to get out from under that situation to ever make Tumblr a profitable enterprise. - Tumblr has very little monetizable content. Yahoo ads on Tumblr sites have still not come to fruition after several years of management claims that it's around the corner. They will presumably face a user revolt if and when it does roll out. Display ads only appear in the admin dashboard, which has far lower hit rates than the public facing sites themselves. The vast majority of sites are permanently non-monetizable because they are one of: porn, illegal content, branded corporate sites like yahooeng.tumblr.com. Yet to discard sites like those is to severely damage Tumblr's traffic rankings, which is the only thing they have to sell ads against (if they sold ads). I see a lot of similarities between Tumblr and a Yahoo acquisition from a previous era: GeoCities. They're both instances of Yahoo spending too much to buy what they think is the latest hot thing that will build their userbase, and instead getting nothing in return but a giant bill and a no way to gain money or prestige off of the product. [1] http://www.businessinsider.com/tumblr-is-getting-sucked-into-the-yahoo-mothership-2015-4 http://www.businessinsider.com/tumblr-is-getting-sucked-into...
- perseusprime11 11y agoHow much do you want to bet she will start her Venture Capital firm after this debacle?
- Altay- 11y agoThese sort of comments always annoy me. If you work at declining companies like Yahoo, HP, etc you should already consider your job lost. Just show up for the paycheck while planning your next move. This has to be what >90% of people are doing as-is. People aren't that stupid... are they? This is CERTAINLY not the last round of layoffs at Yahoo as it positions itself for sale. Same goes for every declining business in every industry in every country in every era of business history.
- rjurney 11y agoActually, a lot of smart people have returned or joined Yahoo lately, since Marissa took over. And they aren't in it for a 9-5. They support a lot of great open source work, which helps them get good people.
- marshray 11y agoI've known people who've spent most of their entire careers in declining market companies. It's not necessarily a terrible place to work for everyone and at the end of the day it's a paycheck all the same.