Guest post: Yahoo Finance employees flee for their lives
Written by a reader. Fact-checked by your mom.
Remember how Yahoo's Q2 earnings plummeted? They said it was slumping advertising from online finance (plus automotive). Remember that Nielsen NetRatings gives Yahoo 54% of all online financial services advertising in the US. That's over half the entire category, folks. Oooooooooooooohhhhhhh!
Yahoo Finance gets, like, a gazillion pageviews (upwards of 1 billion a month, but check the ratings). There's just one problem there right now: The entire New York team that kept the place running—four of the six NY product and BD people—have quit on General Manager Betsy White, three of them in the last nine weeks.
Is Yahoo Finance a hollow shell? Is White catastropically hard to work for? Is the NY-Sunnyvale-Santa Monica triangulation too exhausting? Are the unlimited expense accounts and anorexic women in black dresses at Conde Nast unbearably alluring? Or does Yahoo simply hold no more promise for ambitious onliners?
Inquiring minds want to know.
Meanwhile, maybe Yahoo shouldn't use HotJobs for all its open positions. Anyone can search and sort, so it's easy—really, really, REALLY easy—to find out how many chairs are empty.
Here are the open Yahoo Finance positions as of Sep 28:
- Yahoo Finance - Managing Editor: Used to be Christopher Jones, who went to Conde Nast Portfolio Online.
- Yahoo Finance - Assistant Managing Editor: New position, not yet filled.
- Yahoo Finance - Director of Business Development: Used to be Maria Molland, who followed former GM Nathan Richardson to Dow Jones.
- Yahoo Finance - Senior Business Development Manager: Used to be M. Scott Havens, who went to Conde Nast Portfolio Online.
- Yahoo Finance - Business Development Associate: Used to be Chris Hunter, who went to CNNmoney.com.
- Yahoo Finance - Intern: It's an intern; there have been several over the years.
- Yahoo Finance - Senior Sales Producer: Unclear who this person may be; one sales producer is on maternity leave.
- SPECIAL ADDED BONUS DEPARTURE! The Director of Ad Solutions who ran all the sales producers for Finance and some other verticals — Ari M. Brandt — also left for Conde Nast Portfolio recently.