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Yahoo Morale Heading South

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by Kevin Maney
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Oct 21 2008 9:03pm EDT

Yahoo Morale, Heading South

Kevin Maney writes: A year ago, in the aftermath of Terry Semel getting driven out of Yahoo and co-founder Jerry Yang taking over as CEO, most Yahoo employees seemed psyched about Yang. He had been the company's spiritual center, and the feeling was that Semel had made a mess of things and Yang would make Yahoo into Yahoo again.


So...now what would you think? Over the past year, Yang has botched his dance with Microsoft and badly handled the arrival of the Prince of Darkness, a.k.a. Carl Icahn. He's failed to do much that is generating excitement about Yahoo again, and now Yang says he'll lay off 10% of the workforce -- 1,400 people -- as part of a response to financials that are swirling down the toilet.

Over on employee-rating site Glassdoor, you can get a sense of what employees think. They're giving Yang a 37% approval rating -- which certainly isn't among the worst in tech, but isn't that great either. Struggling Michael Dell is at 58%. Jonathan Schwartz at Sun, which just announced dismal earnings, is at 28%.

Comments posted by Yahoo employees on Glassdoor are also telling. Pros to working at Yahoo generally seem to be fun co-workers, good perks and good pay. The cons typically attack management. A sampling:

Poor management - constant re-orgs are a definite sign that management has little clue what to do. Layoffs were followed by new recruitment which was very hard to accompolish. How do you convince smart people to work for Yahoo with all the head lines going around?

Management is clueless. A lot of work is repeated because it is not communicated.

Top management totally clueless

Of course, blaming management is as old as the Roman Empire. But at this point, how much support does Yang have from his workforce? From Glassdoor, it seems like that resource is dwindling.


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