Yahoo Reviews in Los Angeles, CA Area

Pros

Overall, I worked with some great product teams at Yahoo. Great product managers and technical leads made for some very satisfying job experience.

Cons

At Yahoo, there were too many reorganizations to caused lots of distractions instead a focus on the projects. A Microsoft buyout was not healthy for the organization

Advice to Senior Management

Focus more on the internal workings of the company and less on the stock price and then the products will end up speaking for themselves.

Pros

Medical Benefits
Time off policy
Free coffee and soda!
Regular employee recognition events

Cons

Long commute for me
Sometimes difficult to move up in the same org.

Advice to Senior Management

Keep the company focused on our core principles and values.

Pros

Lots of good people to work with, including some very sharp, talented developers. For example, internal technical mailing lists were very educational.

Cons

Lots of murky politics at higher levels of management, lack of transparency about upper management's decision making, and apparently arbitrary decisions handed down.

Advice to Senior Management

Figure out who you want Yahoo to be and what you want it to do, and make it clear to the employees what's going on. That doesn't mean holding bi-weekly content-free "all hands" meetings, though.

Pros

1. good and relaxed culture
2. decent benefits + compensation
3. great engineers and ppl to work with

Cons

1. not much growth prospect
2. employees dissatisfied with management

Advice to Senior Management

improve on execution and focus
stop laying of ppl, send bad message

Pros

- people are great to work with
- learned a lot from my colleagues
- fun environment - interesting content

Cons

- development resources were always the bottleneck.
- felt like we never shipped new products
- didn't always have a clear picture of priorities

Advice to Senior Management

spend more time with your team. you need to learn about each member and figure out their strengths and weaknesses

Pros

* lots of bright and talented engineers

Cons

* clueless management
* they come with a new "identity" every 6 months

Advice to Senior Management

* every engineer in the company knew "It's you!" is a DOA - the sr. management had to spend 500 million to realize it.

Pros

Good benefits and office space

Cons

Lack of vision and strategy from the Exec mgmt
Terrible internal tools and processes

Advice to Senior Management

Don't always focus on the current quarter, look out to the longer time horizon and make your decisions based on that.

Pros

- Flexible hours if need be. You can really manage your own schedule and people do respect it, or stay quiet about.
- Cross-functional teams are mostly beneficial to everyone involved.

Cons

- Constant rumors of layoffs
- Not bringing innovative products to market
- Feeling of stagnation
- Exec shuffles never end

Advice to Senior Management

- Stop the incessant re-orgs
- Hire senior management in the location were the team actually resides
- Start innovating

Pros

Very good, understanding employer.
Great benefits.
Work-life balance.
Knowledge Sharing.
Great co-workers.

Cons

Limited opportunities for progress.
Less than competent middle management.
Poor decision making and execution.
Perpetual reorganization that never seem to give benefit.

Advice to Senior Management

Listen more to employees at the lowest rungs and do that proactively.
Most of the middle management is looking out for their own best interests and not Yahoos. So you will not get good clarity.
Undertake performance based reorganization and hold management accountable for decisions.
Take exit interviews very very seriously.

Pros

You can get away with not doing anything all day if you play your cards right.

Cons

The company is like a rudderless ship, lost in the ocean. It almost feels like senior management decides strategy on a trial and error basis. Re-orgs are constant. I myself had 4 different managers in one year. Some people had up to 7 different managers that same year. Politics and bureaucracy dominates everything.

Advice to Senior Management

Get a clue.