Yahoo Reviews

Pros

free coffee bar in each building--saves you thousands on Starbucks and a chance to work at scale effecting hundreds of millions of internet users

Cons

too much focus on the short-term revenue at the expense of strategic longer term plays have exposed Yahoo! to competitors

Advice to Senior Management

stop trying to be too many things--focus on what makes Yahoo! unique and cut away everything else that doesn't fit

Pros

I joined Yahoo eight years ago.

When I first joined, the company was a fun place to work. The thrill of coding something that had impact on the life on hundreds of millions users was overwhelming. It made me extremely proud.

Even today I still have no regret in staying at Yahoo this long because I, and the team, has moved the product to the top rank on the market.

Cons

For the past several years, Yahoo has been on this downhill slope. And so far I haven't seen the end of the tunnel yet.

Yahoo has become a place that emphasizes on the show/demos. It appears that the upper management is running the company based on PPTs, not realities.

For example, the company has adopted agile process and CI. But everybody seems to forget the original purpose of having agile and CI. The only thing, that matters, is the green light on the dashboard. Nobody pays attention to the quality of test cases.

Advice to Senior Management

1. Talk to the engineers.
2. Get a reality check
3. Get rid of PPTs

Pros

Balanced HR Practices
Great technologies

Cons

Week leadership
Bad Press
Excessive cost cutting

Advice to Senior Management

Where is CEO?

Pros

Big name with many great assets and resources - lots of potential; great benefits (some of the best out there) and perks (free lattes are awesome); some great people.

Cons

Lack of consistent and lasting strategy translates into sometimes competing priorities within the company and much wasted work. With the right management and strategy, Yahoo could remain a force in its industry.

Advice to Senior Management

Establish a clear and thoughtful strategy and cascade it throughout the organization. Don't just talk about putting together a strategy -- deliver it!

Pros

Interesting work. Finally seem to have found a direction.

Cons

External drama.
Reorgs happen too frequently.

Pros

lot of opportunity are available

Cons

loss of vision by leaders

Advice to Senior Management

have a long term vision and implement it

Pros

Yahoo is still a strong brand, if that is a valid reason to work here. There is still a good amount of talent, so it is good to work with some competent individual contributors. One can get to learn a lot if you are in the right place.

Cons

Senior Management is now more clueless than ever. The state of uncertainty has been the only constant at Yahoo for the past couple of years. This continues to demoralize a lot of employees and one can feel it at the cafeteria. Asking folks to keep at it because that is the best thing to do is so lame.

Chief Product Officer Blake may have some vision, but it is more theoretical than actionable. Many people talk about innovation, but an overall strategy is missing. Piecemeal solutions for iPad and other social efforts are not tied to an overall strategy. Even these efforts have stumbled at best. If Blake really means taking bold steps to reach 10-10-10 goals, then the senior leadership needs to take some bold steps and not just talk about them. To execute on such a vision, Yahoo needs leaders - not just managers - who first have the capability to speak the truth and face it.

A lot of what is wrong at Yahoo has to do with two main reasons:
1. There are a lot of people in positions where they should not be. There are senior managers in technical positions and they lack the knowledge to lead and drive teams. This blocks everyone and diminishes group performance. These managers continue to exist for a very long time because of their capability to play politics, spread gossips and build their own pyramids. Many managers and their superiors play the "I scratch your back and you scratch mine" during yearly reviews and continue to advance. Yearly reviews are mostly positive because the culture at Yahoo has gone soft and people are generally scared or just don't care to provide negative reviews or as these are better known as "constructive feedback". Either way the reviews continue to be fit people into curves so that compensation can be spread around. This leads to percolating only positive news upstream so that all looks good at least for a while. When things break, as they do there is a subtle finger pointing campaign to wash themselves fo the responsibility.

2. Lack of or broken new product and innovation strategy. Yahoo continues to make money with what it already has. Nothing new has made money for Yahoo for a very long time. Internally, at the lowest level there are a lot of innovative ideas, but no clear way to get them out there. At the highest levels there is a clear lack of product strategy. Blake has talked about some big goals, but they lack an execution strategy.

HR depart ment at Yahoo is very detached. There is no concept of employee development and training. Perhaps Yahoo has decided that it will be able to attract top talent for new initiative without having to invest in internal training initiatives.

Advice to Senior Management

Review all managers who are not technical and determine whether they are in the right positions. Either let them go or reassign to positions that fit their "competencies".

Dare yourself to not fit employees in the curve. Some groups and teams have more than 10% of employees who perform at the highest levels.

Re-Task HR Depart to be actively engaged in talent identification and development. Actively encourage shuffling people into different groups. This will also help break the stranglehold of incompetent managers.

Jerry Yang continues to be Chief Yahoo and his role has always been dubious. It appears that Jerry wants to have the cake and eat it too. It is time that senior leadership develops some spine to tell Jerry that it is time for him to let go.

Pros

Good work & life balance

Cons

Changing management ship often leads to insecurity in employee's competence.

Advice to Senior Management

Provide more specific info on how management going to do

Pros

Great work atmosphere and culture.

Cons

Poor Leadership.Very few stock options are given as compensation and they are all time low.Lot of Redundancy in organisation hierarchy.

Advice to Senior Management

Hire smart ones.Find a leader who has online industry experience.Get your innovative ideas marketed before the competitor does.

Pros

nice people, friendly environment. have opportunities to learn

Cons

high level management is not good, not much new opportunities