雅虎CEO斯科特•汤普森（Scott Thompson）最近在没有任何具体作战计划的情况下裁减了2000名员工，而且也没有解释为什么要进行裁员，以及这个裁员计划与重点项目之间的关系。
本周二的一次电话会议上，讨论雅虎的第一季度收益时，汤普森只是透露了一些信息。经过一次战略回顾之后，汤普森得出结论，认为雅虎最大的问题就是战略的无计划扩张。
汤普森称，在他一月份上任之前，雅虎在形式上浪费的精力和时间太多，没有几件真正做的好的事情。雅虎的广大用户对这个问题的贡献最大：向每个新创企业的用户直接送达一个消防带的能力让雅虎看起来是很成功的，至少在一开始是这样的。但是汤普森认为，雅虎所提供的每款产品和服务对用户的约束，相对于大多数新创企业来讲，要多得多。但是这并不意味着我们将一直继续做着现在的工作。
汤普森补充道，雅虎试图在这些竞争激烈的行业竞争，只会带来副作用，这会稀释雅虎在其他擅长的领域的力量，未来我们更应该清楚，什么东西是雅虎不必做的。
汤普森表示，雅虎会从关闭50个不必要的项目开始，也会去掉那些多余的科技平台。雅虎将把精力集中在媒体网络上，主要是运动，新闻，娱乐和金融重要领域。同时，雅虎将会把大量的工程师转移到以商业为基础的商务活动中，并将研发资源重新集中在雅虎拥有的产业上而不是那些为外部出版商服务的平台。
提到商业，汤普森，曾是eBay贝宝的总裁，在对待裁员问题上，曾经无意之中说了这样的话。我不是随便决定就将这些人裁掉的。我们有上千个工作努力，并且忠实的贝宝员工。抱歉，是忠实的人们，也就是雅虎的员工。
Yahoo CEO Scott Thompson took some heat recently for laying off 2,000 people without issuing a detailed battle plan explaining why those layoffs were necessary and how they figured into the big picture.
On a call to discuss the company’s first-quarter earnings Tuesday, Thompson revealed a little of that picture. After conducting a strategic review, he said, he came to the conclusion that Yahoo’s biggest problem was strategic sprawl.
Prior to his arrival in January, he said, “Yahoo had been doing way too much for too long and was only doing a few things really well.” The sheer scale of Yahoo’s massive audience contributed to the problem: The ability to direct a firehose of new users to every new venture made it seem like they were all succeeding, at least initially. “Each of our products and services may individually generate more engagement than most start-ups…but that does not mean we should continue to do everything we currently do,” he said.
Trying to compete on so many fronts had the pernicious effect of diluting the talent Yahoo could throw at the areas that mattered most, he added. “We need to be clearer going forward about what we won’t do,” he said.
Thompson said that Yahoo will begin by shutting down some 50 properties it deems inessential and consolidating redundant technology platforms. It will refocus its media network around the core areas of sports, news, entertainment and finance. It will be moving more of its engineers into commerce-based businesses, and refocusing its R&D resources on owned-and-operated businesses rather than on platforms that serve outside publishers.
Speaking of commerce, Thompson, a former president of eBay’s PayPal, made a rather blatant Freudian slip while addressing all those layoffs. “I don’t take the decision to eliminate jobs lightly,” he said. “We have thousands of hard working and loyal PayPal — excuse me, loyal people, here at Yahoo.”
