At the risk of sounding like we’re kicking a dead horse — then lighting it on fire — we’ve been able to confirm another significant departure from Yahoo this evening. Raj Vemulapalli, Yahoo’s Head of Engineering for Real Time Communications, is leaving, the company has confirmed to us.
Vemulapalli, amazingly, has been with Yahoo for over 11 years. Over that span he has worked his way up the engineering ranks, culminating in his position leading some of the few products that have been bright spots for Yahoo in recent years. That includes the massively-used Yahoo Messenger product, and all of the other messaging integration across the various Yahoo products.
As he puts it in his LinkedIn profile, these products, “deliver billions of messages per day, delight 250+ million monthly unique users and generate $150+ million in revenues for Yahoo!”
Naturally, as seems to be the norm with Yahoo recently, the situation surrounding Vemulapalli’s departure is a bit odd. We had heard that today was actually his last day at the company. But when reached for comment, he told us that he had not yet decided on his future with the company and was still “contemplating” it. Meanwhile, Yahoo’s communication team at first had no response to our inquiry about the situation, then gave us a “no comment”, then confirmed his departure with no further details.
Okay then.