The turnover rate has been high; they've lost lots of people during recent years. However, they also bring in lots of people at the same time. A lot of my co-workers around have started in less than a year, and I personally know couple guys who're planning to leave within a year or so. Every Monday you see 30-50 newbies coming in for orientation.
The work is interesting in the sense that you would be reaching to impact 500 million Yahoo users. We have initiated quite a bunch of interesting projects in search and the other areas.
There're lots of nice perks and benefits here and there. Gyms, free shuttles with Wifi or VTA. In Sunnyvale campus, Lots of great concerts and events, parties, poker nights. In other locations, it is fewer. You have a free coffee bar in every building and subsidized food at the cafe. Sometimes you get to see Jerry or Filo eating there. The hours are pretty flexible as long as you can get the work done. Employees are allowed to work from home usually as they request. The co-workers are very friendly and competent.
All is well, except that I don't see much excitement from the co-workers. There's a general lack of aggressiveness among the employees and in the corporate culture.
Of course I am not looking for a company that expects me to work 24/7. But I don't see a sense of urgency to get the work done, and to excel at your work. Sometimes the company policy seems too lenient to me. For instance, the work from home policy. I see couple people work from home everyday. This in fact hurts the whole team's productivity, how focused can you be if you are at the same time feeding your kid? what if you need to collaborate with another co-worker for some project? The co-workers are pretty smart and know what they're doing, sometimes I just doubt how much of themselves they give to the company.
So, as a newbie who came out of college, I'd expect something more exciting, more on the edge, more like in the battlefield. But I genuinely enjoy my life here at Yahoo, and the weather of California. =] So I give it a four star.
