Yahoo Reviews

Pros

Yahoo! definitely deserves the title as premier digital company. Both inside and out, the company tries its upmost to provide the best service to both it's clients, employees and stakeholders. A truly magnificent organization that has shaped todays web.

Cons

Highly dynamic industry bringing much uncertainty with recent shake-ups in structure from top-down however this is very much part of the Internet industry overall.

Advice to Senior Management

Continue to develop a great workplace and culture that inspires employees, develop and attract great leadership while continuing to grow the business through world-class advertising solutions and strategic M&A deals with high potential start-ups and web properties. Google and Facebook will continue to gain momentum through monopolistic positions in search and social respectfully, however Yahoo! can win in the display marketplace if it continues to deliver on advertisers needs.

Pros

Managers are down-to-earth and really nice
great pantry
Friday bash can be fun
Smart and nice colleagues
Good technology

Cons

In Beijing it's usually fixing bugs
Not so much creativity
Product details are not optimized

Advice to Senior Management

More creativity

Pros

There are still capable engineers left at Yahoo. There is not much supervision from managers, which is a plus in my opinion.

Cons

Some people take advantage of the lack of supervision and get away. Also the appraisal process is a big joke, as the company takes 5 months annually to do the reviews.

Advice to Senior Management

A lot of politics is going on in the management chain. Also it's not uncommon to have non-technical managers managing engineers, and that just doesn't work.

Pros

- Overall good package and employee benefits
- Good work life balance
- Managers are friendly and easy to approach

Cons

- Management and org keep changing.
- Getting harder for career development in current situation
- High turnover rate

Pros

Working on petabytes of data.
Free coffee
Good company recognition outside of North America.
By and large, friendly staff and non competitive culture. (read collaborative).

Cons

Leaks. Non stop leaks. You find out more about the company from AllthingsD then you do from your management. The word "Yahoo" is used as the antonym of "Google" in North America. Large number of "obstructionist" long time Y! employees. These are the ones that have mastered the art of doing as little as possible while looking busy. Most are waiting for that all elusive layoff package or for their green card to be approved. More red tape then your local government. Their idea of automation is to manually push twice a week. Wide and i mean wide technology stack. 1 department can have mind numbing number of technical solutions for the same problem.

Advice to Senior Management

Purge your VP's. If they have a "chief of staff", something is very wrong. Make your architects do real work. Group hugs don't solve technical problems.

Pros

Good culture. Good salaries. Positive environment.

Cons

Very hard to move up. Bureaucracy.

Advice to Senior Management

Get a clear vision as moral is down.

Pros

good pay - above average for valley prob
good benefits - no complaints
good people - although leaving
laid back atmosphere

Cons

incompetent management
too much management - how many Senior Directors and above?
unfairness in promotions/compensation
reorgs - expect a new manager every 6 months or so
layoffs - expect at least 1 a year

Advice to Senior Management

Upper management should quit - or force peers to quit. Communicate more to all employees instead of trying to gloss over problems - address them.

Pros

The internship was challenging and interesting and you were surrounded by really knowledgeable people. Overall good experience for my future career, and a good line to have in your CV

Cons

The uncertainty around Yahoo's situation was very disturbing. Some parts of our project got cancelled because of rearrangements in Yahoo's assets. A lot of people were on the fence about staying or leaving.

Advice to Senior Management

Find a way to leverage the great talent at Yahoo and rally it around a unified focused vision and product.

Pros

work with smart and talented people

Cons

Favortism not good for morale

Advice to Senior Management

listen to the employees.

Pros

Lots of free coffee, plenty of employee events, and casual work environment. Be prepared to wear lots of purple.

Cons

Very top heavy management, some of the people there don't have any people or projects to manage so they just look like they're floating around.