Jerry Yang Email To All Yahoos: 10% Of You Are Fired | Hacker News Reader

Jerry Yang Email To All Yahoos: 10% Of You Are Fired

techcrunch.com

25 pointsqhoxie43 comments

From my personal perspective, I'm half expecting Yahoo to end up just like AOL. A subsidiary of a media conglomerate that is just used when making bad jokes and referencing the past. Their current position definitely indicates this, and I'm talking both on the internal company side of things (in terms of products, innovation, and market reach) and on the public side of things (shares).

I can't help but feel that Yahoo! signed its own death certificate when they so loudly fought off Microsoft's handsome buyout offer. Would Yahoo have taken this offer, at least Yahoo would have the potential to still exist and be recognized. It would've been interesting to see how it played out. In a round about way, we can even look at Yahoo as a modern Netscape... they stood up to Microsoft and bit the bullet in the end.

AOL is probably most remembered for their annoying "Free Dial-Up Internet Trial" CDs in the mail that were more cumbersome than spam, what is Yahoo going to be remembered for?

You've got fail.

As for YHOO, probably that awful color purple they put everywhere. Or their broadcast.com acquisition.

Interesting note:

If you look at stock stats, 'The Market' expects more good to come out of Yahoo then it does of MS.

That's my understanding anyway. I always feel daft with these things.

At no point has yahoo (sorry, Yahoo!) offended anybody in the manner that AOL managed to do time and time again.

EDIT: I'm wrong. I used yahoo (sorry, Yahoo!) as a domain provider until they jacked up the price to 34.95/year. WTF? Couldn't believe it. So I got to spend two hours transfering them... I guess I'll always remember Yahoo! for that.

JERRY, THE SHIFT KEY IS NEXT TO THE LETTER Z

Absolutely. Personally, I think there is something mildly offensive about sending out a company-wide email announcing layoffs without bothering to capitalize your sentences. Apparently this is standard practice for Jerry Yang, though.

Yeah I agree - I see emails without capitals all the time, but often these are brief and it indicates the author wanted to respond quickly and succinctly...

When you're announcing layoffs it looks like you just did it on a whim, or with a lack of forethought.

I know this is not true at all, and probably very harsh - I'm sure that is not the intent at all... but these things show sensitivity.

Note the use of the semi-colon in paragraph #2. I don't know anyone who uses the semi-colon in that capacity in off-the-cuff prose. The decision to stick it in lower-caps was presumably a conscious decision.

What you have to understand, and is pointed out very briefly in the TC article, is that EVERY email from Jerry is lowercase. I can see how some people think this is offensive, but honestly, they lack the context of every other email he's ever sent. I think Yahoos would be more worried if he started using capitals honestly.

i think that the use of capital letters will decline while most of our writing is done on screen and the world becomes smaller still. most writing systems make no distinction between capital and lowercase letters. also, eventually the american spelling system will become dominant. jerry is probably incorporating the same philosophy that is highly regarded at apple, google and by many ui designers: "if it aint needed, get rid of it"

Why stop there?

"meihem in ce klasrum": http://www.english-zone.com/index.php?page=1114&pid=81

jerry is probably incorporating the same philosophy that is highly regarded at apple, google and by many ui designers

Still, seems like bad timing for Jerry to demonstrate his highly-regarded design philosophies. YHOO ain't AAPL or GOOG.

i think its always a good time to get rid of superfluous mark-up.

They hired a consulting company to guide them. How could they possibly help? Yahoo is clearly not looking to make forays into drastically different businesses, not looking to acquire companies in different sectors, and is ultimately dealing with organizational issues possobly unique to a technology company, that Yahoo should have a better grasp of. Anyone here have any positive anecdotes to share about a consulting company's value addition to tech companies ? Or in broader sectors?

In this case Bain was brought in to do the layoffs and other "restructuring", not for technical help.

I interpreted ChaitanyaSai's point as "Why bring in Bain and Co, people who have no special insight into what needs to be done for Yahoo to tell Yahoo management what to do?"

Why can't the top management at Yahoo decide what to do and do it? I mean after all these years at Yahoo don't they know who to fire and who to keep? All the data Bain and Co could get or process in the few weeks they work for, Yahoo management has too.

I would have thought that (making decisions and executing) was what the managers were being paid the big bucks for.

(I've never really understood the value of these consulting firms so if anyone can help with that I'd appreciate it).

I think their only value is blame shifting. If you can even call that value.

I work for a large consulting company and I think a lot of company's have trouble looking outside their box. They know that things are failing but they have no idea what they need to do. In most cases large companies fail because they get stuck at local maxima where small changes make things worse even though there are much better aproaches they need to shake things up to find a new area.

PS: A classic example is Monday Night Football which we promoted as a good option help the NFL prosper. But, you can also point out a lot of dumb things they do because that's the way they have always done things etc.

They'll probably announce the layoffs on a Friday, to have less chance of an 'incident'.

Yes, that's what caught my eye too. It's a bad sign.

If for no other reason, so that the blame on who gets axed goes to the consultants instead of who really made the decisions (the managers)

Given the events of the last few years (the Terry Semel experiment, the botched MS acquisition - which cost every employee, presumably - and finally this preannouncement) Jerry should volunteer to be the first one to leave.

Looks like YC Summer '09 just got a little more crowded.

"with the help of Bain & Co. [Bob and Bob], we initiated a series of steps to determine how we can become more efficient and productive as an organization"

So they brought in outside help to figure out that they needed a 10% layoff?

A grab bag of three cards would've been a whole lot cheaper;

1) Keep all yahoos at 20% reduced salary. 2) Cut 50% of middle management (whatever that means). 3) Announce 10-20% yahoo layoff.

Christ, you grammar nerd-nazis. This is why people don't like geeks. Did you ever sort out if Kirk or Picard was better, too? Did you READ the letter?!

Jerry Yang isn't in the business of doing whatever pleases you and as evidenced by the content of the letter, there are bigger things to worry about.

I think Yahoo is doomed. Sad to say, but all this hassle with Microsoft just killed them :-(.

Web based companies like Yahoo, Google, Amazon etc should hire engineers who can think out of the box.

And with conventional interview process they cannot hire them.

An interviewer may not appreciate these 'disruptive' engineers.

Shouldn't the title have read "10% of Yahoos Leave"? If only these guys paid attention to the outside world they could have seen what's been coming for months, if not years...

Microsoft deal doesn't look so bad now, what with Yang at the helm of this sinking liner.

The email is refreshingly sincere, but I found the grammar amusing.

I found it infuriating. I mean we all make mistakes, but this is clearly some obtuse point that he makes by totally ignoring English.

The content seemed sincere. However if I was in yahoo I would be tempted to spend my life hunting and killing people who don't capitalise sentences. It would scar me for life.

Agreed, bad news presented with poor grammar would be bothersome at best. I will say, however, that most of them are probably used to those mannerisms.

Is it possible that Jerry Yang is a bumbling idiot? I mean the handling of things on his watch, and grammar ;)

1 point is a line, 2 points is a trend ....

Well time will tell how much he gets blamed for yahoo's (possible) downfall. I will be very very annoyed if Yahoo can't remain Yahoo, and saddened.

He's not dumb. He and Filo were in the PhD program in CS at Stanford when they started the company.

A lot of the problem here is Google. Google draws away much of the online ad revenue that would have been Yahoo's. It also draws away most of the good hackers, so Yahoo continues to fall behind.

If Airbus were an outlier on the scale that Google is, Boeing would look terrible.

He seems to be the whipping boy in the media though (which is how most people would "know" him) - I assume you know him personally though.

I wouldn't expect him to be dumb like that, but a bumbling manager watching your "baby" suffer was more what I was thinking. I am sure there are furious shareholders right now.

I don't see how Google can draw away Yahoo's online ad revenue. Only in the sense that Google competes with Yahoo for search impressions. On the media side of things Google is not a serious competitor.

That Yahoo can't monetize the search impressions they do get as well as Google (and thus would benefit from Google monetization deal) is purely a technical execution failure for Yahoo engineering and executives. To this day you can't take an export from Google AdWords account and import it in Yahoo. They say you can, but their SEM system is not powerful enough to support anything nontrivial.

"However if I was in yahoo"

How ironic, considering you are criticizing his English... You meant "However if I were in Yahoo" ;-)

This has become a rule for me: never criticize usage, grammar, or spelling on the internet. Fate immediately arranges for me a blunder of some sort to knock me down a notch.

I blame the unseasonal cold weather seezing up my jointz ;)

DAMN I knew that would happen. It wasn't his English I was criticising it was his grammar.

Also, I would think a comment on a thread versus a company wide email is a rather different kettle of fish. In a different universe.

Actually I will level with you. I wouldn't know good grammar if it hit me in the head (can it do that??).

But for the love of everything good, I wish he would capitalise his sentences.

I didn't mean to criticize you. I just couldn't resist, given the context :-)

I know, I had a good chuckle. First rule of the internet, never criticise someones grammar. Gah, never know what version of that spelling to use.

Maybe the 10% can go to microsoft and try and get 10% of that 40 billion dollars they were tossing around a while ago.

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