22 April 2009 | Author: Yasmin Sulaiman

Bartz rallies Yahoo! engineers following job cuts

How many stories on Yahoo!'s misfortunes can the web handle? Just as it looked like there was a silver lining to its perpetually dark cloud - in the form of re-igniting talks with Microsoft, of course - things go grey and gloomy again. Revelations that Yahoo!'s 2009 Q1 profits dipped 13 per cent and net income plummeted by 78 per cent from 2008 levels have been followed by the announcement that it will let go of five per cent of its worldwide workforce - around 675 employees.

However, there is still hope for a brighter future as new CEO Carol Bartz continues her quest to give the search engine its old innovative flame back. In a conference call with journalists earlier this week, Bartz indicated that its most recent job cuts were more of a cull than a forced jettison of workers. CNET reports that she emphasised the need for Yahoo! to employ successful engineers. She said: "We have good engineers but have to hire more and get them focused on the right stuff. It's probably the most important thing Yahoo!'s going to do to really become a big strong growing international company."

In addition to rallying Yahoo!'s engineers, Bartz also said that the company planned to bring together its major properties to create a unified global platform, in opposition to its current scattered approach. She even bemoaned the search engine's past focus on the US market, stating "... the international properties almost had to fend for themselves."

Bartz's comments come two months after her blog post on the company's most recent management reshuffle, and shortly after her attention-grabbing speech at the Morgan Stanley Technology conference in San Francisco in March. Since her inception as Yahoo! CEO, many analysts have commented that her straight-talking, no nonsense approach is just what Yahoo! needs as such a volatile time - not just for the company, but for businesses across the world.

This sharp approach is often backed up her in rhetoric too. In this week's conference call, she reportedly said: "There were [Yahoo!] engineers in almost every country and way too many product people. We had one product management person for every three engineers. We had a lot of people running around but nobody f***ing doing anything!"

Despite the swift changes and reshuffles that Bartz has introduced to Yahoo!, it's likely to be some time before the company sees financial return on its planned investments - something that Bartz herself seems to agree on too. But with world leaders Google continually batting out search change after search change (for instance, its recent Ajax-enhanced display rollout) it looks like the search pioneer may have even more lost ground to recover when - and if - it's finally in tip-top shape again.

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