Yahoo layoffs hit home today
There’s nothing innovative about layoffs — especially not how Yahoo has gone about cutting some 1,500 people today. We’ve shied away from covering this depressing news, because we focus on innovation. If you’re hungry for outgoing chief executive Jerry Yang’s cheesy layoff memo and other grisly details, you can read all about it on Techmeme.
But one of my friends was among those 1,500. He’s a talented engineer who came in through one of the web conglomerate’s recent acquisitions.
The silver lining that many people seem to be talking about: A lot of Yahoo employees want to leave. They’re tired of the bureaucracy and the mismanagement, tired of working great products that never seem to get enough attention. Other tech companies are busy hiring them. Despite the recession, Silicon Valley continues to grow.
This seems to fit the description of my friend. No sooner did I mention the news about him on Twitter than an entrepreneur I know pinged me for an introduction.
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About the Author, Eric Eldon
Eric currently covers digital media technology and business news, especially what's happening on social networks and their platforms. He also writes and edits stories about venture capital, and lots of other stuff, too. He started at VentureBeat in the spring of 2007, half a year or so after Matt Marshall left his reporting job at the San Jose Mercury News to found the site. Eric previously cofounded a startup called Writewith, that was building editorial software for newspapers and other groups of writers. The startup didn't work out, but he learned a lot.
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