A report in the New York Times Sunday did not paint a very pretty picture of what is going on at Yahoo under the direction of CEO Marissa Mayer. While it seems that Mayer is considering cutting employees — to the tune of 10 percent — in an attempt to salvage the company’s flagging state, she may not have to do much to turn them loose.
Within the last year, a third of Yahoo employees have left, according to sources who spoke with the Times. And, according to Glassdoor, only slightly more than third of employees believe Yahoo’s prospects are improving.
Despite entering the company with verve and magnetism, Mayer is largely held as the responsible party for the low morale at the company — namely, the series of stealth layoffs Mayer embarked on last year, predominately targeting an engineering team in India. The shock of the layoffs lead to fear and distrust that spread throughout the company, which only grew considerably with each resulting round of layoffs.
Lengthy reorganizations, particularly in its deliberations over if and when to spin off a stake in Alibaba, have only added insult to injury. At this point, workers would rather get laid off in the hopes of taking a severance.
The turnaround is slow, but that is not entirely unexpected. Mayer has always been up front about the length of the pain Yahoo will endure to have a decent chance at survival, and has invested predominately in technologies to get it to the next level.
Primarily, that has translated into updating and overhauling products like Yahoo Mail, exploring new products like Live Text, and making notable acquisitions of existing platforms like Polyvore.
But it’s hard to tell whether Mayer will get to fulfill her promise within the time allotted. As morale continues to decrease along with the number of options, Yahoo — and by extension Mayer — may already be too deep in hot water.
➤ Yahoo’s Brain Drain Shows a Loss of Faith Inside the Company [New York Times]
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