Yahoo Reviews in Los Angeles, CA Area

Pros

Excellent coworkers who are smart and hard-working. Opportunities to work on exciting new products such as search marketing. Good exposures to new technologies such as cloud computing.

Cons

Senior managers failed to provide sound long term strategies and good directions. Internal communications among different teams were extremely frustrating.

Advice to Senior Management

Make sure what Yahoo is and will be. It is going to be very hard, if not impossible, to be both a technology company and a media company.

Pros

The group I work with is filled with hard-working, dedicated folks who really care about the product they put out and how it affects people's lives.

Cons

Constant management change, long commute

Advice to Senior Management

Stand still, evaluate what's working and not, make a decision, and stick with it!

Pros

Good salary and benefits. Work hours were great; on-call hours can be a killer, though. Many nice people. Great work location for me. The Overture culture was still around when I started which was organized, had direction and was fun.

Cons

As the Sunnyvale work culture moved South, a huge bureaucracy overtook the place. Layers of roadblocks to success. The "open source" mantra is getting old - independent groups modify an app to the point of it being proprietary, then they stick a "Y" in front the the app name. Goals are vague or non-existent. Morale is very low.

Advice to Senior Management

Why so much bureaucracy? Why so many silos? Why so much difficulty in getting projects done? I think the new CEO will be eaten up before she breaks down any of the silos or bureaucracy. This is definitely and "old boys" company and I wish Carol Bartz good luck.

Pros

Flex-time and opportunities to work from home, which are ideal for working parents. Nice fringe benefits like free coffee, snacks (in Santa Monica), soda, gym membership, etc. The brand is well-known and highly respected externally. It's nice to be a part of such a global brand.

Cons

Very little career advancement opportunities. It's so political that promotions are based more on who you know rather than what you've accomplished or how hard you work. And management is lacking in many ways. They can't manage, no matter how many management courses they take. The few good managers have already left.

Advice to Senior Management

Most of the managers are incompetent. I'd say that only about 10% of the managers are actually adequate. The rest are terrible at providing support, guidance, and smart decision-making. They care more about their own careers rather than the people, products and Yahoo! overall. It's a shame the company has become so tainted with bureaucracy, politics, in-fighting. I came to yahoo a few years ago with so much excitement and enthusiasm. But all that was killed within a few months due to the poor management, inefficiencies, disorganization, and pure chaos.

Pros

Best part about working with Yahoo is the amount of talented engineers you get to work with. I learned a lot about technology just by reading through various mailing lists where these tech-experts are educating other yahoos on the best practices. Its a casual, open work environment which helps you relax and maintain a good work-life balance.

Cons

The company has no direction. the business units does not have enough control over their engineering resources. Promotion opportunities are less as most of the business units are not faring very well. It gets worse by total lack of communication between the upper management and employees.

Advice to Senior Management

Please decide what YAHOO really is !!! is it a media company or search company ? Yahoo could be a very good place to work if they fix the senior management

Pros

Putting down a big brand on your resume. Working in or breaking into the Internet technology industry. Working for a large company means not having to worry about proposing a budget for even simple, basic things to do your job. Large companies tend to have business sophistication and processes so you can learn to solve complex business problems. Large companies tend to offer great employee benefits, especially in the Internet industry. More specifically, Yahoo is a data-rich company so whenever you need some statistics or data to build a business case, you have information at your fingertips (as long as you are resourceful within the company and know who to contact to get those data). Yahoo employees are mostly very friendly and helpful and as long as you make friends, you will get your resources eventually.

Cons

Like many large companies, Yahoo suffers from bureaucracy. Moreover, it has a systemic problem: a culture of dysfunctions built by "yes-people", "idea people" who don't know a thing about execution reality, self-serving corporate climbers and helpless workaholics who aren't taking the company anywhere even as they work long hours 7 days a week. Yahoo is overly diversified so it is highly likely that you'd be assign to work on a lackluster product, among many they have, with no chance of turning around because of under commitment by executive management.

Advice to Senior Management

Quit your job. Enjoy your wealth from those bonuses you earned. Toss your ego and let OTHERS who can give Yahoo a chance to win lead the company. Use the most valuable resource Yahoo has that no other Internet giants have - audience and behavioral data - and apply a rational, data-based business model to figure out the company's strategic directions. Don't rely on gut-feel or what seems to sexy.

Pros

Work life benefits. Really good benefits package. Better than any I've ever seen anywhere in my 10 year work history.

The people are friendly enough. Perks are decent - various on campus parties, etc.

All in all, if you're looking for a decent salary and a great work life benefits, Yahoo is a good place. Don't expect to climb the corporate ladder too quickly.

Cons

Always chasing Google. There's definitely Google envy.

Company has not performed well and job security and promotion are an issue.

Workspace is not the greatest. The cubes are small and privacy is limited. The cafeteria is horrible and the coffee is free but tastes bad.

Advice to Senior Management

Some of them need to follow Jerry's lead and resign.

Pros

Yahoo is a good place to land for a project manager if you are tired of the grind of agency work or consulting. Travel is minimal and well funded (always nice hotels, not motel 6). Culture is really hit or miss - some groups are a great close-knit group, while others - if you fell over dead, no one would notice until you didn't show up at a Sprint meeting for a couple of days. The benefits will spoil anyone - working from home is easy to do as teams are sometimes widely dispersed; getting time off was never an issue.

Cons

The internal divisions between product and engineering are debilitating and make it near impossible to get anything done. Priorities are constantly shifting and the work culture has pretty much ground to a halt with all of the drama that has gone on in 2008. It is sad - the company could do so much if the management structure and strategy was actually aligned between the disciplines.

Advice to Senior Management

Get everyone on the same page for once! Don't let the rift between engineering and product development go on any longer!

Pros

Yahoo! facilitates a fun work environment, though you don't lose site of the fact that you're working in corporate America. The pay is good, benefits great, and stock options are available. Free bagels in the morning, free gym or gym reimbursement, free vending machines, and ping pong tables in the cafeteria. Beer is acceptable on Fridays.

Yahoo!'s are smart, diverse, and surprisingly social. You'll meet many people who you'll want to stay in contact if you were to ever leave Yahoo!

Cons

Unless you're "A" level talent, forget about making it to the top. You're just another cog in the bloated Yahoo! wheel.

Advice to Senior Management

Sell, Sell, Sell.

Pros

1. Very fair compensation.
2. VERY good benefits/perks. They are only beaten in this department by Google.
2. Very friendly environment.
3. Opportunities to move around within the company to enrich yourself.
4. Very smart associates.
5. If you are a self-starter, and can produce, then you can promote your personal brand, and make quite a name for yourself.

Cons

1. They may not exist in 3-4 years.
2. They can sometimes overwork you.
3. Management's competence and management's respect for you is somewhat in question. They can be consistently patronizing and superficially polite, which is annoying to MOST Software Engineers. They seem to be bogged down now with the events that are happening in the outside world, and seem frozen, unable to take appropriate action.

Advice to Senior Management

- Define Yahoo!
- Start taking action. There are many ideas floating around, so act on the ones that are cheap to implement, if you don't think they are going to work. Its only a matter of time before things begin to add together.
- Find a new niche. Find a new model. Find a new purpose for being Yahoo! The current advertising model will fail if Yahoo! is irrelevant.
- Hire good people. Get rid of the churn (not the good people) that promote themselves a bit TOO much, while not doing anything at all.
- Get rid of the evangelists, and get back to business.