Yahoo – “Great people, not so great company”

Pros

The people I worked with directly were all, to a person, really great. They were smart and conscientious and I remain good friends with many of them. My manager was also very flexible with work hours and vacation time.

There is a really awesome amount of computing power available at Yahoo, and it is a lot of fun to work on such huge systems. There are only a handful of companies in the world where this is possible, and Yahoo is one of them.

Cons

Part of it could be my own fault for not tooting my own horn enough, but there was essentially no recognition for any amount of good work, at least among my direct coworkers. There also did not seem to be many opportunities for advancement. Additionally, there was very poor leadership from the top on down in terms of priorities and projects, with huge swings from week to week. "So I just worked 90 hours last week finishing this code, and it's no longer a priority?" There was also a lack of vision or direction, which resulted in a lot of busywork that really wasn't that important but _had_ to be completed immediately. Management at all levels often tells the employees things that are obviously not true, and which often contradict things the employees were told mere days or weeks before.

Advice to Senior Management

Stop coddling incompetent managers. The management structure is completely dysfunctional. Important revenue-impacting projects are held up for months or years because a separate group is incompetent. There are always lots of meetings to discuss these sorts of things, meetings which are never helpful and usually just go around in circles. I have seen a series of weekly meetings end up exactly where they started 6 months earlier!