This used to be a great company, then it lost its way, forgot what it was, and chose sucky management - Something In Human Resources Yahoo Employee Review

1.0
Jul 31, 2014
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

The benefits package is pretty great.

Cons

Years ago, we had a hard card of "Our Core Values" that we added to our badges. One of the core values was communication. Well, hope springs eternal. Too often the right had didn't know what the left hand was doing. Departments were siloed and had vested a vested interest in protecting their turf. The idea of "One Yahoo!" was floated for over a decade and will never come to fruition. Back in the day, we were a search company and our competition was Google. Then we became a media company, and our competition was Sony, EMI, and newspapers/magazines. Then we became a social media company and our competition was Facebook, for crying out loud. When I was forced out, we'd decided that we were no longer a media company but we weren't told what sort of company we were. I'd lived through 5 CEOs, including the resurrection of Jerry Yang, and wow, was THAT a worthless choice. There's a general consensus that Marissa didn't tell the Board that she was pregnant before they hired her. She hired her BFF out of Portugal (before he had the legal right to work in the US, of course, cuz the laws don't apply to Marissa and her senior staff), and very publicly threw him under the bus when she could no longer deny that he was out of his league. She's made some lame hiring decisions, and she's made some really horrible hiring decisions. EVERY offer passes through at least one hiring committee, and then is scrutinized by Marissa. If she doesn't like the comp (and she often doesn't), she will reduce it to what she thinks is fitting and there is no appeal. She talks about hiring the best and the brightest but neither the best nor the brightest will surrender their right to negotiate their compensation. Anyone who does so cannot, by definition, be either the best or the brightest. Free food goes only so far. Oh, and cutting work from home while claiming that it only affected 100 people, most of whom, according to you, rarely logged into the network to actually work seems a little like overkill. Friday 430 pm all-hands meetings is also a nice touch, especially when if you show up at 4:31pm, security will not unlock the doors to let you in. The employee population have also gone from reasonably nice/decent to an unattractive assortment of narcissists and ego maniacs who seem to take out their frustration of having no work-life balance and being constantly under the gun and under threat of getting a poor quarterly review that they can take it out on their co-workers. We used to have fun at Yahoo!. We'd work our tails off but we'd have fun. Now it is just a miserable, hateful place.

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Pros

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Cons

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CEO approval
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Pros

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Cons

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