Yahoo Shakes Things Up

PreacherTom writes "Growing strife inside Yahoo! has erupted into a sweeping management and organizational shakeup. CEO Terry Semel announced yesterday that the company will be reordered into three groups: one to focus on advertisers and publishers, another to focus on Yahoo!'s base of over 500 million users, and a third on technology and development. While Semel denies layoffs are in the future, there will be replacements in the upper echelon for the world's most popular website. The changes, the most extensive at Yahoo in more than five years, cap months of speculation about how it would respond to slowing sales growth, a slumping stock price, and a steady stream of executive departures in the past year."

Yahoo is in trouble

[filenavigator]

I think Yahoo has been coasting for years. If my website logs are a reflection of their popularity they are in big trouble. Google beats them at a rate of 100 to 1. On top of that their version of 'adwords' is the worst I have seen (From an ad buyer's perspective). It takes days for them to approve the ad (Google takes minutes) Then when they do approve it they change the wording - usually done by a non native English speaker! I have had my software adverts changed to include the word warez. WAREZ! They need to clean house or they will need to fire more until they do.

Steve Wiseman
http://www.windows-admin-tools.com [windows-admin-tools.com]

*Cough* Bullh!t *Cough*

[malsdavis]

base of over 500 million users

right, 500 million unique users? I'm surprised they didn't claim to still be the world's most popular search engine, surely they would with those figures.

Re:Yahoo is in trouble

[eln]

You're right that Yahoo is in trouble, but this looks like a panic move that won't really change much. They don't know what to do, they only know something drastic has to be done. So, they throw out the executives they don't like, and shuffle the others around. As each executive takes over their new role, they will have massive layoffs in order to "streamline" the business, but they still won't really know what that business is.

Yahoo has spent too much time accumulating services that are not "best of breed" by any means, but are simply reactions to the offerings of others. They don't even really know what kind of company they want to be, or even what business they're in (other than "the web"), and until they figure that out, they're going to continue to flail madly while they spiral down the drain.

Re:TV Listings

[Bill Dimm]

Yeah, and they've gotten tons of feedback on it [yahoo.com] in their own blog. I gave up on them and switched to AOL TV [aol.com] too. I've never used AOL for anything before. Go figure.

Re:TV Listings

[roaddemon]

Ditto, I absolutely can't believe that got released to production. I've been using tv.yahoo.com for years now and had to switch when they "upgraded". It seems that they are throwing changes at the wall now just to see what will stick.

The appeal of working for Yahoo...

[coleopterana]

What is it? There's a generic appeal to working for web companies like Yahoo and Google, but there's a specific appeal to some of them, like putting out new projects, working on your interests, so on. I see Yahoo as having shared the generic appeal of those company types in the past and now they feel more second tier, both to users and to jobseekers. If you aren't appealing as more than just a job in the field, it's going to be hard to get the people that can really help you be innovative, flexible and forward-thinking, especially when you're competing with companies (like Google) that not only have that image publicly but (at least in my experience) deliver for their employees. Anyone out there working for Yahoo? What drew you to it, what keeps you there, what seems to be the type of new hire, and what draws them?

Re:The appeal of working for Yahoo...

[Anonymous Coward]

I work for Yahoo! (note the "!" :) ).

Judging the appeal of a company based on the CEO (or even the top management) is like judging the ride of a car by looking at the hood ornament.

Yahoo! is a great place to work. We may not have officially sanctioned "20% time off" policies, but there's a lot of freedom to find your own calling.

Tomorrow (Thursday) is an internal "Hack Day", and Yahoo!s all over the world will be churning out interesting/cool projects in an informal competition. It's loads of fun.

The biggest advantage of Yahoo! as an employer is that there is such a wide variety of projects to work on. You want to work on a project doing, say, TV on a mobile device? I'm sure there's a group working on that.