Yahoo Exodus

Posted on June 23, 2008

An interesting undercurrent has been taking place at Yahoo, beginning even before Microsoft’s offer to buy was made and eventually rejected.

The numbers of executives leaving since January 2007 has grown to well over a hundred at last count. Executives, mind you. Not junior level people of whom there may be a really large number. But these are VPs, Executive VPs, on up the ladder to the really high profile positions that have been vacated in the very recent weeks.

Surely, one of the things Microsoft was hoping to buy when they made their offer to Yahoo was their talented people. Though that fell through, they may have semi-accomplished their goal. Though they didn’t get the people, they were at least partially responsible for the exodus of top-level employees from the company. That makes Yahoo even less attractive now that part of their real assets are gone. Of note is that few (if, any) of these have gone to work for Microsoft.

The other side of all this leaves a wondering queston….did they really have that many VPs? As many as have left, I wonder how many hundreds remain and why does a company have so many VPs? Almost makes one think of the banking industry, where every young starter gets to be called a VP. I know in a small local bank, there is a president and then about five VPs — that’s it, no other positions other than the secretarial and teller ones. Or like a national chain of discount stores (not WM), where every new employee is called an Assistant Manager (sure thing, at around 6 bucks an hour). I guess since title means more than money to some people, companies keep doing that. Do you suppose some of that goes on at Yahoo as well?