Yahoo Still Silent On Today's Layoffs, But Employees Vent

Yahoo may be tight-lipped about the layoffs that are taking place today within the company, but that’s not stopping employees who have been handed pink slips from going down quietly. A Yahoo employee in the Flickr group just Tweeted “All I got For Christmas from Yahoo is a pink slip. And hugs from Flickr. And a nice package. Adios Y! Good luck on your downslide.” The Tweet was deleted moments later but we have a screenshot.

The layoffs in the Flickr group are consistent with early reports of cutbacks that we received. And the tidbit about a “nice package?” We received this anonymous tip yesterday:

The atmosphere here has never been worse. I have heard of dozens of current employee\’s who have provided years of service who were recently asked by their managers if they wanted to be voluntarily let go in order to save someone elses job…I expect hundreds of Yahoo\’s who will be collecting lucrative severance packages in addition to having had months to secure new jobs for themselves in 2011….Lucky me l get to enjoy an extravagant 6 week vacation abroad on Yahoo\’s dime starting just before xmas. I\’ve already booked travel and am actually going to be meeting up with several other employees who also did essentially the same as me… I have worked here for 5 years and I can say without question I have never seen this place in such shambles.

Here’s another one we received today:

Please keep this anonymous, but I was just laid off from Yahoo! and it sounds like there are more people getting laid off today.

These reports are of course anecdotal, but join the throngs of emails that we are receiving from employees about the layoffs.

From various tips and reports, it appears that Yahoo is laying off about 5 percent of its worldwide staff of 14,100, although some business and product units are getting hit harder than others. The total numer of layoffs is rumored to be 650 to 700.

We’ve reached out Yahoo, as we have repeatedly throughout these layoffs, but have yet to hear back from them. So far they refuse to even acknowledge publicly that layoffs are occurring. We’ll keep you updated if we hear any more news from Yahoo or its employees on the status of layoffs taking place at the company today.