3 ms·

I left Yahoo three weeks ago to do my own thing. There are lots of talented people at Yahoo - there are not too many companies which deal with the kind of scale

by sriramk 15y ago

I left Yahoo three weeks ago to do my own thing. There are lots of talented people at Yahoo - there are not too many companies which deal with the kind of scale and tech Yahoo does and a lot of people like that. Some of them have been there for over a decade. What is happening to the company is very sad.

samstave 15y ago
>...there are not too many companies which deal with the kind of scale and tech Yahoo does and a lot of people like that" Google, Facebook, Apple - all here in the bay area, all massive scale. Are yahooligans not flocking to these giants?
- chollida1 15y ago
  Well moving jobs, even for the most talented employees can be difficult for a number of reasons. 1) inertia, there is alot to be said for working at the same place for 10 years, you know the people, systems, and processes. By this time you might be 35 and married with a few kids. Often you don't know if you have the energy to go do it all over again. 2) fear of failure. If you've been somewhere and grown into a role as the go to person it can be a big blow to the ego to tell your friends you're going to go interview at google or facebook, only to be rejected. 3) moving sideways or taking a step backward. Just because you became a senior developer level 5 at yahoo doesn't mean you'd be able to do the same role at google or facebook. You may have to settle for a smaller role or even a pay cut to join those companies.
  - carguy1983 15y ago
    Grandparent post only mentioned 3 companies out of literally thousands in the valley, 1 of which only has a couple thousand employees and is privately held. "Not too many" companies operate at Yahoo scale is a true statement still. I would also add to the parent post that many Yahoo employees are financially successful, having been through earlier stages. They aren't fresh grads looking for salary bumps or the target demographic to cash in on an IPO (since they already went through one, or have greatly profited from options since being hired at Yahoo). That being said, most of the 'good' people I know of (key word being know of) have left Yahoo for the other big internet companies or startups. They also seem to have hired a lot of 'media' type people in the recent past, not necessarily tech people.
  - samstave 15y ago
    All the points you make are negative. I.e. they all point to reasons, fear based, which a Yahoo employee would be staying. That sucks. Sure, Yahoo is scale - but isn't it in 95% maintenance mode? What innovation is Yahoo doing. I am not aware of any initiatives like at Google and Facebook where they are doing something along the lines of the open computing, or their own hardware dev for datacenter infrastructure advancement. I could be completely misinformed. I am, however, of the opinion that we are just watching Yahoo on life support. A zombie company with vital signs (users) but no cognitive ability (growth, innovation, new products etc). I am not trying to denigrate Yahoo -- I just have seen nothing that gives me any confidence what-so-ever that I should care about them as a company. I don't know how much cash they have - but I have said this in the past here on HN - if there was anyone with any brains in the Yahoo C-Suite, they would be taking their wads of cash and backing every startup in the valley in a YC manner with the same goal of owning 5-10% of the future. They should be widely investing in the market and then leveraging their "massive scale" infrastructure, datacenter expertise etc to hosting and supporting all these companies. There is lot of opportunity that Yahoo is simply too complacent to take advantage of. Yahoo could be a game changer if they stopped trying to think of themselves as a portal or even search site (I don't think they believe at all they are a search portal given their fealty to Bing) and start realizing that they are an infrastructure asset with ~2 billion in cash and over a decade of valley domain expertise in high volume traffic. (They had 2B in both 2003 and in 2009 as far as I can find) Invest/buy/acquire like mad and get a good % of the action in the valley. Get NEW users on that infrastructure which appears to be rotting.
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throwaway45642 15y ago
I remember you. You were trying to convince me to take the offer from Yahoo. Seems like things have changed for you as well.

by sriramk 15y ago

samstave 15y ago

>...there are not too many companies which deal with the kind of scale and tech Yahoo does and a lot of people like that" Google, Facebook, Apple - all here in the bay area, all massive scale. Are yahooligans not flocking to these giants?

chollida1 15y ago
Well moving jobs, even for the most talented employees can be difficult for a number of reasons. 1) inertia, there is alot to be said for working at the same place for 10 years, you know the people, systems, and processes. By this time you might be 35 and married with a few kids. Often you don't know if you have the energy to go do it all over again. 2) fear of failure. If you've been somewhere and grown into a role as the go to person it can be a big blow to the ego to tell your friends you're going to go interview at google or facebook, only to be rejected. 3) moving sideways or taking a step backward. Just because you became a senior developer level 5 at yahoo doesn't mean you'd be able to do the same role at google or facebook. You may have to settle for a smaller role or even a pay cut to join those companies.
- carguy1983 15y ago
  Grandparent post only mentioned 3 companies out of literally thousands in the valley, 1 of which only has a couple thousand employees and is privately held. "Not too many" companies operate at Yahoo scale is a true statement still. I would also add to the parent post that many Yahoo employees are financially successful, having been through earlier stages. They aren't fresh grads looking for salary bumps or the target demographic to cash in on an IPO (since they already went through one, or have greatly profited from options since being hired at Yahoo). That being said, most of the 'good' people I know of (key word being know of) have left Yahoo for the other big internet companies or startups. They also seem to have hired a lot of 'media' type people in the recent past, not necessarily tech people.
- samstave 15y ago
  All the points you make are negative. I.e. they all point to reasons, fear based, which a Yahoo employee would be staying. That sucks. Sure, Yahoo is scale - but isn't it in 95% maintenance mode? What innovation is Yahoo doing. I am not aware of any initiatives like at Google and Facebook where they are doing something along the lines of the open computing, or their own hardware dev for datacenter infrastructure advancement. I could be completely misinformed. I am, however, of the opinion that we are just watching Yahoo on life support. A zombie company with vital signs (users) but no cognitive ability (growth, innovation, new products etc). I am not trying to denigrate Yahoo -- I just have seen nothing that gives me any confidence what-so-ever that I should care about them as a company. I don't know how much cash they have - but I have said this in the past here on HN - if there was anyone with any brains in the Yahoo C-Suite, they would be taking their wads of cash and backing every startup in the valley in a YC manner with the same goal of owning 5-10% of the future. They should be widely investing in the market and then leveraging their "massive scale" infrastructure, datacenter expertise etc to hosting and supporting all these companies. There is lot of opportunity that Yahoo is simply too complacent to take advantage of. Yahoo could be a game changer if they stopped trying to think of themselves as a portal or even search site (I don't think they believe at all they are a search portal given their fealty to Bing) and start realizing that they are an infrastructure asset with ~2 billion in cash and over a decade of valley domain expertise in high volume traffic. (They had 2B in both 2003 and in 2009 as far as I can find) Invest/buy/acquire like mad and get a good % of the action in the valley. Get NEW users on that infrastructure which appears to be rotting.
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throwaway45642 15y ago

I remember you. You were trying to convince me to take the offer from Yahoo. Seems like things have changed for you as well.