Yahoo reviews

Once you end up in a team where either a) the manager doesn't like you, or there is just no chemistry between you and the manager, or b) the manager already has a chosen set of favorite people that they know really well and have strong trust relationships with (and getting a new manager like that could happen any day given the huge amount of re-orgs taking place over there all the time)... it will be only a matter of time before you will start getting bad "QPR" ratings, with all the stress and reduced options (even moving to other positions becomes harder once you get a bad "grade") that that brings. All this is too much stress and too little to gain, if you ask me, which is unfortunate given all the good things that the company has going for it.

Long Standing Issues: * Meetingitis - ICs for hours a week, managers all the time. Meetings to prepare for meetings about meetings. * Too many middle managers, and the ones that "kiss up and kick down" get promoted. * Silos, no incentive to work with other groups or have fresh ideas. People who do get screwed in the reviews. * Top down, one size fits all "Agile" process imposed, whether it makes sense or not. Lots of "Cargo Cult Agile" used as a micromanagement tool ("Why haven't you done what you committed to?" - every sprint a death march.) * Below market wages - by around $20K * Loaded with H1(b) indentured workers, who get treated like slaves because they can't quit without being shipped home. This pressures wages for everyone below market. Slow green card process, too - because once people get their green card, they will leave. * NIH syndrome - long standing habit of not wanting anything in their stack not invented or at least pissed in by in-house engineers. Only dribs and drabs given back to the open source community. * HR sides with management, even when management does something so egregiously bad that multiple people report it. Current CEO added: * QPR - quarterly stack ranking, employees compete against each other to not get voted off the island. You're gauged on how visible what you do is, not on how well you do it. People are paranoid and demoralized. * Open plan, no partitions, small desks, no privacy, noisy - symbolizes utter contempt for employees and their need for personal space. * No WFH - to address a problem with incompetent management not realizing that some employees weren't doing any work, the whole company was forced to come in to the (now nasty and crowded) office. Swatting a fly with a sledgehammer, and a nasty letter from HR to kick it off. * Beware changing groups, your previous manager will give you a bad QPR, and if you had one before you're out the door. * Mimicking Google, trying to draw in RCGs, shoving older workers (and their domain knowledge) out the door. * People let go in QPR are asked to sign an absolution letter saying there was no discrimination or retaliation at Yahoo in order to get their severance. [I didn't sign - it would have been a lie.] Letter also demanded the existence of the letter be kept secret for some reason... but only if you agreed to it. * C-level micromanagement, and when people point out user dissatisfaction or problems, just dismisses the users as "whiners" or "change averse".