Quite a few people got laid off at Yahoo today; reports are trickling in from Twitter.
UPDATED: This hit techmeme; adding a few details throughout.
CNET reports 1000 (but "no details").
"We are aligning resources to support our big bets: starting points, must buy, and open," a Yahoo spokeswoman said. That refers to Yahoo's new mission of being the most popular starting place for people on the Internet and the most popular advertising platform, as well as the company's focus on opening up Yahoo's network to third-party publishers.
Asked to confirm the exact number of employees affected or what departments they were in, the spokeswoman said the company was not providing details.
"We're making these targeted reductions in areas of our business that don't support our critical growth initiatives," she said.
Some news coverage:
Yahoo Layoffs Happening Now - Search Engine Land roundup.
Some people by name:
Susan Mernit (Personals)
Well, the law of continuous revolution just gave me a good shove.
Today is my last day at Yahoo and the start of something new.
Patrick Houston (Lifestyles) - via PaidContent
I’m told now the number for the Media Group will be about 50. That’s lower than it probably would have been had other actions like the dismantling of the Brand Universe group (some reassigned, some laid off) not already been taken in the last few months.
Randy Farmer and Chip Morningstar
It turns out that this force reduction included [me] Randy Farmer and Chip Morningstar - much to our mutual surprise as we each had strong contributor/leadership roles in the company. From here it looks like they might have gone after those with larger salaries given the number of top-quality people we saw get the axe today. Given what we were working on, it was doubly confusing.
Ryan Kuder who was twittering the news.
Holy crap! Just catching up...What an overwhelmingly supportive response to my layoff tweets today. Y'all are awesome. Thank you.
Salim Ismail (Brickhouse) (TechCrunch)
Salim Ismail, who has led Yahoo Brickhouse since since March 2007, left the company today as part of broader layoffs at Yahoo. Layoff packages were being offered, he said, and he left voluntarily.
There's more I'm sure.
Tips for someone starting an alumni association: use free infrastructure, like a mailing list and some kind of directory, to bootstrap yourself. See e.g. the Cisco Alumni Association which now numbers 700+ ex-Cisco employees on a Yahoo group and in LinkedIn.
Predictably, the recruiters have chimed in:
Memo to YHOO Staffers - WatchMOJO
When I started Mojo Supreme, it was because I wanted to hire people and build something big. I no longer have to think about it, I can actually do it. So, if you have left YHOO or simply looking for a gig, check out what we do and drop me a line.
Wanted: Any Yahoo - furrier.org
Consider this an open call for Yahoo entrepreneurs who know social networks and social graph technology: I’m looking for product managers and engineers for my new social advertising startup.
I was blue-sky dreaming (Ever hear of that Tibetan Buddhist / tantric technique using what's call a melong, IIRC ... looking into a slightly-domed highly-polished disk, like that! *grin*) ...
... what came to mind was Bloomberg, NYTimes, and Soros riding in with a heroic counter-offer, to secure a triumverate [sp?].
NYT has About.com ... not a threatening presence ... and has invested in WordPress ... and Bloomberg wants to have a beneficient persona ... Soros is mischievous ... *shrug* and I'm a sihly aulde fool huh huh
Posted by: Ben Tremblay | February 13, 2008 at 12:20 AM
Heads Up:
That was posted w/o me filling out CAPTCHA.
I realized I wanted to add a piece ("Oh, say, didn't WashingtonPost hire the editor who'd ram-rodded the WikiTorial at LATimes? Maybe they'd want a hand in there, to counter-balance the paper of record!") so hit "back" ... to my astonishment the squirrels spun their wheels and my comment was already posted!
Fine and dandy here, but ...
... that's not the Right Thing to Do.
Is it?
--bdt
Posted by: Ben Tremblay | February 13, 2008 at 12:23 AM
I guess you can call me a recruiter but I'm an entrepreneur. There are a ton of great people at Yahoo some have already made money and might want that startup experience. Yahoo has spend 2 years at the lower mgr levels web2.0fying their company. I want to hire those kind of prod mgrs and engineers.
I'm working on solving the relevance problem for social networking advertising..
Posted by: John Furrier | February 13, 2008 at 01:41 AM
More bailing out from Yahoo -
Josh Schachter and Les Orchard from delicious -
Stuart Butterfield and Caterina Fake from Flickr.
Posted by: Edward Vielmetti | June 20, 2008 at 06:39 PM