(Fwiw, Ms Mayer has been honing this particular axe for a long time now. Rumors have been circulating inside Yahoo India for quite a while now about an impending massacre. The good guys mostly left some time ago.)
PS: I don't work at Yahoo, but I do live in Bangalore and know people who worked there. Fwiw,my friends are all fine,either moved out in time or relocated to the USA etc. fwiw.)
Almost all the comments posted below the original local blog post (which the TechCrunch post links to) are job offers, so I guess at least some of them will be fine.
the problem with this news is that yahoo, instead of evaluating those layers and managers, took the lazy aproach. then being close to revenue deadlines, made it look twice as lazy.
firing useless layers of management is good. laying off with BS excuses is not.
for example, they laid off people not working well on their instant messager in carsbard, as the article states. but instead of saying so, they called it office cuts, and made life hell for the few folks there working very well from there but not in the lazy team.
and the more random layoffs (as opposed to honest message that some team didnt work out) the good guys get scared and leave, causing more bad guy to be "laid off" in a vicious cycle
Different companies have dramatically different amounts of management.
Ten years ago, it was an amazing place to work - great people, good managers and a CEO who sat at the same table for lunch.
http://notmysock.org/blog/yblr/
I spent more time with those people than I did in college, in my high-school or any other job since or before. Some of those people today have gotten a card that says "Move to Sunnyvale or collect your severance".
I feel sad for them, because some of them would hold similar memories of a great office, want to keep contributing and feel some sort of great loss, simply from being told that they're not needed.
I don't really worry about them - they're awesome engineers who have been hiding their talents under a bushel for years.
All of them would have a new job by new year, would burn their severance on a nice vacation during their break and not worry about their life - it's just that the temporary but irreplaceable sense of loss, that I can feel as I got off the phone.
Most of this means nothing - just that this place where we all met and grew up to be engineers, is no longer there.
Like when your childhood home gets torn apart to make a skyscraper (or worse, a parking lot).
Loyalty, it seems, does not have any value in modern organizations. Traditionally, in India, job/career is viewed differently than in America. Job indicates some sort of stability to life and these sort of decisions, can crash those views. There are some who misused that stability and there are many who utilized that stability properly and create value to life,society.
I read in news the statements of visiting American CEO's that they understand India,localize their operations ...etc. My suggestion is, in addition to understanding "customer/consumer" aspect of Indians, please understand the other aspects such as society,priorities, values, relative importance ...etc too. If that is the case, organizations will be careful during hiring, making sustainable business models avoiding knee-jerk policies.
There isn't a huge cultural difference between India and the US here. Many, if not most people would love a long-term reliable career with a company they could care about and would care about them and their/their family's well being. The only reason we have a new culture of adversarial relationships between employers and employees in the US now is because of the loss of loyalty on the company side.
India is, maybe, just next up to feel the pain of what happens when money is placed above all else - including human suffering.
This was traditionally the case in the U.S. as well, it is a lamentable situation.
everyone good is always ready to jump, anda eventually jump, layoff or not.
It would make no sense to lay off 1000s of people only to encourage them to move somewhere where you have to pay them more money.
So people probably think you're wrong.
That said, what makes it on HN is largely a function of luck.
A lot of startups in India are hiring and I would be happy to make intros if you are looking.
edit: The edited title is way better. Thank you!
