It makes me sad when I hear that people at Yahoo aren't happy. They have so many great products, many of which are market leaders, but overall it seems like every product group feels like they're losing to Google.
Imagine, for example, if you were in the fantasy sports group at Yahoo. ESPN was there first, has a natural advantage in the space, and had a decent product. Yahoo came in and blew them away. Everyone in that group should be thrilled. But I always get the sense that they're forced to feel like losers because some other group isn't number 1.
Yes, it's sad. Yes, it would be way cooler if our search product was the market leader. But #2 is respectable, and still very very profitable. And, let's not forget that:
1. The yahoo home page is the single most highly trafficked url on the internet. (Though, I've heard that the main google search page takes a hit because so many people bypass it with browser search boxes these days.)
2. Yahoo mail is the most used mail client.
3. Yahoo news is the most popular news site on the internet.
Not to mention lots of other products. And it's not a bad place to work, besides.
I wish I'd talked to you last august. I think all of those things are great and make for a place I'd want to work. But everyone I did manage to talk to said that it was horrible working at Yahoo. This was even before MSFT started bidding. It's also not a vote of confidence when every manager or executive I talked to has now had an entry on TechCrunch announcing their departure.
I'll tell you what I told the last recruiter who tried to use that as a reason to convince me to leave:
Yahoo has way too many managers. We need more of them to leave. Yahoo is in way too many products. We need to cut a lot of those. Yahoo has bought a lot of startups, and former CEOs rarely make happy long-term employees. On the whole, the resignations are a good thing, from where I'm sitting.
Yahoo's a VERY big company, and it's structured as this strange conglomerate of smaller teams. Not all orgs are created equal, unfortunately. Some managers are better than others. I've worked in 4 different teams here, and been involved in 1 other product. I've had 6 different direct managers. My experience with each has been different. After one of those experiences, I was about to walk out the door, but they made me an offer I couldn't refuse. On the whole, it's been the best job I've ever had, financially, artistically, and educationally.
If you're willing to speak up and pursue what you want to work on, Yahoo's a great place to be. The ceiling is very high for engineers, especially if you're really into PHP or C++ or Javascript.
Imagine, for example, if you were in the fantasy sports group at Yahoo. ESPN was there first, has a natural advantage in the space, and had a decent product. Yahoo came in and blew them away. Everyone in that group should be thrilled. But I always get the sense that they're forced to feel like losers because some other group isn't number 1.