This great recession is not sparing anyone and Finance and IT have been thoroughly hit. Yahoo is the new victim. More than 1500 employees are too be given a pink slip from inside Yahoo. The layoffs are mostly across the board. But general, human resources and finance department will take a bigger hit, since the expenses are cost-based and most of their costs are staff.

Its not only the future of those unfortunate 1500 employees but the manner of presenting the disastrous news to them is what strikes me most because,

  • They will have to leave that day (Wednesday) only.
  • There will be security present at its Sunnyvale HQ and elsewhere, as there always is with most big layoffs at any company. So I guess you can understand that it will not be an emotional one.
  • The worst part is most employees do not know if they will be let go yet and it may be possible that a whole branch is moved with the entire vertical level of Yahoo employees.

Yang has his defense ready and that is,

I look at these cuts as both a short-term and long-term effort. In the short term, we have consolidation and organizational corrections to make. In the long term, we will look at our whole portfolio and are now asking ourselves in each case if we need to be in this business. We’re asking ourselves–should we sell it or should we shut it down? That is the kind of comprehensive look we are doing across the company.

If this is not the great depression then what is?