Yahoo Job Cuts & The Effects
Yahoo is planning on cutting hundreds of jobs in an attempt to turn things around for its struggling business. It looks like the cuts will number around 500 right now. I wonder if these mass layoffs are really going to help Yahoo turn its business around or if this is just a lame attempt to cut back costs with little positive effect or even a negative effect. What do I mean by that? If you work for a company that is laying hundreds of people off around you, and you happen to not be one of those, how confident are you feeling about your company? It might be time to start tightening up your resume. Also what about those employees who are being let go? With the thousands of online communities and tons of blogs, I wouldn’t want 100’s of ex-employees possibly sharing all the negatives about a company that I was attempting to turn around.
Also how does this affect the partnerships with the newspaper groups. Will there be any adverse effects and will this end up making the Yahoo/Newspaper Consortium partnership less valuable to the newspaper industry which is already having a tough time? You can only speculate now, but Yahoo has been a survivor in the past so there’s certainly room for them to rebound.
UPDATE: Yahoo is now considering drastic layoffs, in the range of 1,500-2,500 heads
Based on what nytimes.com is reporting, I’d say the newspaper consortium is safe:
That makes a lot of sense. News and Content related services are definitely a major focus of theirs and it appears that the cutbacks are in other areas according to IHT “Yahoo said it would phase out or consolidate services like photos, premium music, auctions and Yahoo 360, a largely unsuccessful social network.”
As long as they don’t rid themselves of Flickr or del.icio.us!
Those are really the only two Yahoo products I use anyway.