Yahoo layoffs storm, China branch also lying gun

March 2, in order to celebrate the 20 anniversary of Yahoo, Yahoo Beijing Global Research and Development center of the new restaurant officially opened. It's not much of a day to celebrate a company that has a proven track record of falling stock prices. But today, Yahoo's announcement has left the restaurant open for less than two weeks to face a new fate.

A senior vice president of Yahoo announced today that Beijing's global research and Development center will be closed and its operations merged with other teams. According to insiders, Yahoo may provide employees with "n+4" compensation. At present, the beginning of a one-to-one discussion of compensation, partial dismissal, the first batch is scheduled to leave at the end of this month. Yesterday, Yahoo Beijing Research Center Company has been rumored that employees working more than three years can go to the United States headquarters to continue to work, but according to reporters understand the March 18 public meeting did not mention.

According to Yahoo Beijing Global Research Center insiders revealed that the company yesterday (March 17) in the form of internal mail to inform the team will be dissolved, 18th morning company meeting officially announced the news. "The reason is simple, Yahoo has no business in China." "The human cost of research and development in China's first-tier cities has risen so fast that Beijing's labor costs are about twice times that of India," the insider said. "There was a feeling inside the company that Yahoo Beijing Research center would not close because of Alibaba's stake," he said.

"If the cost of manpower is low, Yahoo will not rush to lay off staff, since last year, several foreign companies have dissolved the Chinese division of the team, high human costs is a major reason, in such a foreign company's senior executives, from India more than from China." "The insiders said.

From last year, Adobe closed the China Research and Development Branch, micro-strategy, red dot, Zynga, Nokia, Cisco, Compuware and so on have been adjusted to China branch, or layoffs or dissolved. The new team quickly set up in India, where the cost of labor is lower, after Adobe China disbanded its research team last year. "Zynga China is a victim of a tragedy that has been profitable in the past few years only to meet the expectations of US and European investors demanding that Zynga cut costs," said the company. Industry insiders say.

Yahoo in 2009 as a global research and development Center, a total of more than 350 employees, is owned by the United States Yahoo's sole responsibility for the operation of the research and development agencies, Yahoo North has two core business: one is mobile, Yahoo Global Mobile back-end support and some key product development, For example, Flickr's iOS and Android apps are entirely north-graduate, and the other is cloud computing. At the same time, Yahoo personalized platform for the most core research and development work, personalized recommendations in the entire index and recommendation, are in the Beijing Research and Development Center completed.

The close of Yahoo's north research is closely related to the game between Yahoo CEO Melissa Meyers and shareholders. Starboard Value, an organization that buys a large number of Yahoo shares for activist investors, has been pushing Yahoo's management to meet its demands after gaining recognition from Yahoo's big shareholder.

At an investor conference in January, Yahoo announced that the company was split into one, stripping Alibaba of its shares from Yahoo, and that the spin-off package was proposed by Starboard value, the biggest appeal of the activist investor. Second, Starboard value requires Yahoo to cut its operating costs by 2.5 to 500 million dollars.

In recent years, Yahoo CEO has become frequent, since 2012, has continued in its 66 countries and regions in the low-key layoffs. In the four years from 2008 to 2012, Yahoo's layoffs reached 6000. As early as 2013, Yahoo China said it would no longer provide information and community services, the original team will focus on the spread of the Alibaba Group's public welfare undertakings. The same year China Yahoo Mailbox also officially stopped service.