Comments on: Yahoo engineers strike after closure of French R&D site results in 78 laid off

By: led display

led display — Thu, 25 Feb 2010 09:11:37 +0000

By: Jumper

Jumper — Sun, 27 Dec 2009 21:54:34 +0000

Bravo to the French for striking this evil, despicable company Yahoo! Yahoo is a dying monstrosity, an anachronism that never should have been. What ever happened to that evil shitmonger Jerry Yang? Did he take all his purple robes and retire to his homeland, Taiwan? Look at the female turd he bequeated to Yahoo — Carol Bartz! Is that his way of gaining the ultimate revenge? Carol Bartz is the “female” Jerry Yang, a piece of work that everyone hates. but who shits on them before she fires them. Jerry Yang will be waiting for Carol Bartz in hell and Carol will surely enjoy being his bitch for eternity! Way to go, Carol fuckin’ Bartz!

By: Bonne année 2010 Yahoo! : Fermeture du site de yahoo! Grenoble (Echirolles) au premier semestre 2010 « CNT sii 38

Sat, 26 Dec 2009 10:32:23 +0000

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By: Bonne année 2010 Yahoo! : Fermeture du site de yahoo! Grenoble (Echirolles) au premier semestre 2010 « Assr38’s Weblog

Sat, 26 Dec 2009 09:19:08 +0000

By: Claus Wahlers

Claus Wahlers — Mon, 21 Dec 2009 22:56:20 +0000

I see the situation in France similar to the German one: The German government peed on highly skilled professionals that wanted to make a difference, as a result those people left the country because they are actually welcome in other countries, and a few years later the government poops its pants because of the lack of highly skilled professionals in the country.

I moved from Germany to Brazil 5 years ago because of exactly that. I own a small consulting shop here now, money (and taxes) flow, everything is rather uncomplicated and, most importantly, i feel welcome.

By: skip

skip — Fri, 18 Dec 2009 02:28:36 +0000

JP is right, you are an idiot. You shouldn’t blame the French for your own mismanagement. Maybe if you understood the French culture better you would not be such a failure. You should review your little story from a different perspective, maybe you will learn something, because you look like quite the fool.

By: georges

georges — Thu, 17 Dec 2009 13:31:39 +0000

So us French guys are good enough to buy American goods like ipod, coca cola or ford cars.
But we’re not good enough to work?

Just look at our companies, EADS doing the airbus
Areva with nuclear technology, http://www.areva-nc.com. Do you think this was built by lazy workers constantly on strike?

Employees here are more stable, they want to work for the same company for at least 5 years.
How much do you think it costs to startups to have employees leave them after just one year?
I’ve worked for 22 years for American companies, and constantly see my US colleagues leave after just one year…

I sometimes work up to midnight, and let me tell you, it’s very frustrating to call the US office where it’s 6PM, to find out that no one is still working there.

I did find over the years that US managers have a tendency to misjudge French employees, but when they see us work hard, stay more than 5 years, and produce good results, they generally think they made a good move in hiring us.

The US and English should also recognize that the French can more easily do business around Europe and the world than US and UK employees, simply because we don’t annoy others with the English language and culture.

Anyway, thanks to America for paying my salary for the last 22 years, but I think I paid back more than honestly!

By: Paul

Paul — Thu, 17 Dec 2009 10:24:03 +0000

Is that a joke? Everytime I have worked with English companies, it was almost impossible to get someone on the phone after 5 or 6pm…

By: nick

nick — Thu, 17 Dec 2009 01:51:08 +0000

So what happens in France if you are on strike and someone pisses you off and you want to start another strike? Does government give you another guy to strike with you or how is this handled?

By: yeah

yeah — Thu, 17 Dec 2009 01:04:49 +0000

lol.

By: yeah

yeah — Thu, 17 Dec 2009 01:00:03 +0000

uhm bonnes vacanes=have a good vacation.

By: jojo

jojo — Wed, 16 Dec 2009 23:01:15 +0000

I think Yahoo did these employees a favor. Now they don’t have to live in Yahoo purgatory. They should move on and create something new and kick the sh*t out of Yahoo.

Really, who wants to work for a company that doesn’t value innovation and good technology anymore.

I say REJOICE for you are FREE.

By: Aksel

Aksel — Wed, 16 Dec 2009 22:49:07 +0000

It is indeed hard to recruit when you’re a start-up in France. But believe me, it is the same in the US and elsewhere in the world. The only big difference is that it is harder to fire a poorly productive worker in France than elsewhere. In most countries, workers are afraid of unemployment, so they will work a lot more but without pleasure and it you will feel it in the overall quality of the output. Make people understand the adventure and endorse it, and you will win, especially in Paris because it is the largest city of Europe, the average level of competence is extremely high, the job market is fluid and infrastructures are world class. It’s up to you to be good manager.

By: Jose

Jose — Wed, 16 Dec 2009 22:39:08 +0000

French on strike?
How strange

By: exy!

exy! — Wed, 16 Dec 2009 22:19:08 +0000

the tragic story here is this: With the lay-offs of Feb/08 and Mar/09, many yahoo! engineers around europe (as happened to the entire team of engineers at Yahoo! spain) were told that they had two options:
a) be laid off
b) move to grenoble and continue working from there.

Now, those that chose to move to Grenoble, with all this means for them and their families, are being laid off – and having to pay for their move back to their country on their own (or, in some cases, they’ll have to spend whatever lay-off package they’ll get in the move).

so, in short, not all Y! Grenoble employees are french – and I support them in their strike, although it will not solve anything

By: netpaths

netpaths — Wed, 16 Dec 2009 22:17:20 +0000

What happened to your original title: Merde Alors

By: Io)

Io) — Wed, 16 Dec 2009 20:27:29 +0000

Take the public money for investments, get benefits from it and then retire saying there’s no more. Typical American way of doing across Europe.
Short-term investments in brains goes only one way : down.

By: Peter in Paris

Peter in Paris — Wed, 16 Dec 2009 20:26:29 +0000

The French have somehow been conditioned to believe that companies only exist to employ people and that every job should be guaranteed for life.

In any case, I would much rather be laid off in France than in the US! It’s part of the French dream. Get fired and get a big pay out from your boss.

(P.S. This is NOT French bashing. I have lived here for 5 years and love this country. But it’s true that the way many French people approach work and business is a bit confusing at times, to say the least)

By: Tim

Tim — Wed, 16 Dec 2009 20:10:08 +0000

There are some things that Americans need to understand about the French system.

Yes, our taxes are very high but in return Health care is free (YES FREE).

Yes, people go on strike for weird reasons in France, but there are historical and practical reasons to that.

One reason is historical: our unions have made the choice of politicizing their cause, believing very early in marxism.

The practical reason: marxism is the antithesis to captalism, therefore our unions never ever ran businesses, as opposed to American and English Unions. THEREFORE OUR UNIONS ARE POOR, and no money means NO REAL INFLUENCE.

Your unions own and run businesses, have stocks in companies, and are sometimes even political parties (Labor & Tories in the UK were just unions in the begining) or linked very firmly to them (they fund them and vice versa).

Therefore, our unions’ only power is to go on strike. It’s the only way they could ever weigh on any decision: going on strike, or threatening to do so.

By: Slash

Slash — Wed, 16 Dec 2009 19:53:29 +0000

French people are alway on strike
English people have long teeth and big ears
Swiss people are slow, rich and work for bank
German eat sausages
American are fat
….

Please stop to be so caricatural !

In France most of the people never strike.

Yahoo fires 80 guys and everybody seems to think that’s normal….. The strike aims to say : Yahoo is not as wonderful as the ads say. Yahoo! agreed to get money from french government, and now Yahoo! is laying off people without giving us the little money they ask. Isn’t it a shame ?

By: Greg

Greg — Wed, 16 Dec 2009 19:47:08 +0000

Yes we do have the highest productivity and there is a simple reason to that. When our ex-government (idiot socialists) lowered the amount of worked hours from 39 to 35, people’s jobs were still the same, but they were asked to do deliver as much work in less hours… Therefore we became more productive. If tomorrow we lower the number of worked hours to 2 hours per week, there’s a good chance that our productivity will triple, if not more!!
Im not saying that French are lazy, I think that historically the government has allowed laziness in public services companies.

But things are changing in a good way in France, Public companies are becoming more and more private and mentalities are changing.

By: Nicolas Cerveaux

Nicolas Cerveaux — Wed, 16 Dec 2009 19:41:52 +0000

I will add that 95% of French hate strike !
Try to work in Paris when all the common transport is down because of a Strike.

Except students or the people who are striking, everybody hate strike.

By: Mo Kilma

Mo Kilma — Wed, 16 Dec 2009 19:15:30 +0000

The French do have the highest per hour productivity in the world. But as you said the French have a sense of entitlement and don’t work as many hours as other nations.

By: boobdar

boobdar — Wed, 16 Dec 2009 19:12:35 +0000

Are those man-boobs?

By: Dave

Dave — Wed, 16 Dec 2009 18:56:03 +0000

Unfortunate that Yahoo is getting rid of its best talent to become Sunnyvale centric.
Choose to get rid of top international talent, in order to keep mediocre talent in Sunnyvale.
Canada, France, South America, Latin American, Australia, Santa Monica.

And the valuable talent at Sunnyvale is choosing to leave as they see all the writing on the wall. Same thing happened in 2002 – and the people making these decisions now, didn’t seem to do their homework, and are doomed to repeat the past.

The amount of red tape at yahoo when I left was beyond belief, it’s not a surprise nothing is getting done, and they continue to fall further and further behind. I’ve mentioned this to Carol but have been ignored.

I really do hope they right their ship. It would be sad to see them become obsolete.

But just another case of an American company thinking it knows what cultures and languages of the world need.