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great moments in hr
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Great Moments in HR
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great moments in hr
your privacy is an illusion
Cool new snoop tool for HR people
Dutch Valleywag reader Dirk Dijksma has come up with a clever twist on the old metasearch engine: He's collected all the sites that HR people use to suss out job applicants, and put them into one page called CVGadget with expanding/collapsing widgets that only show the top few of each set of results from Facebook, Google Documents, etc. It popped up an old resume of mine in five seconds. Note to Dirk: Most Americans have no idea what a CV is, but no worries — they didn't know what a googol was either.
great moments in hr
Matt Mullenweg: All Automattic's foreign workers are independent contractors
At the Start conference yesterday, Automattic founder Matt Mullenweg, creator of the popular WordPress blog software, startled the audience by claiming his company didn't have any employees. Instead, he said, they're all independent contractors. "Is that legal?" some audience members whispered. We're not employment lawyers here, so we can't say. But we note that the IRS says independent contractors are "generally free to seek out business opportunities" and "are available to work in the relevant market." Translation: Mullenweg has just announced that his programmers are available for the poaching! If, that is, you don't mind the occasional security hole. Update: Audience members missed Mullenweg saying this was true of Automattic's foreign workers only. U.S. employees have full benefits, he tells us. Only the offshore workers are eligible for poaching! (Photo via Ma.tt)
great moments in hr
Yahoo sending out Superstar Award nominations -- but who's left to win?
Yahoo employes received calls to nominate colleagues for the company's annual Superstar Awards. What a depressing exercise to force on workers: Will they not, inevitably, think of all of the people they'd like to put forward for the prize — but aren't eligible because they've left Yahoo? Past winners have received cash prizes of as much as $75,000; recently, Yahoo switched to stock-option grants instead, which seem less appealing. The program was the brainchild of departed HR chief Libby Sartain. Since it can only highlight the company's paucity of talent, one wonders how much it will outlast her.
great moments in hr
Is Google's "work hard, play hard" recruiting code for age discrimination?
"We have a preference for those who like to work and play hard," the search giant candidly informs potential candidates for openings for a compliance manager, senior internal auditor, financial project analyst, senior internal controls auditor, management accountant, internal audit treasury manager, accounting manager, internal audit manager, and technology risk analyst. Doesn't exactly conjure up the image of a white-haired 58-year-old Type II diabetic, does it? More »
great moments in hr
Report: Yahoo cuts costs, stops hiring -- except for Valleywag editors
Despite local radio ads, sources tell Silicon Alley Insider Yahoo has frozen its hiring until July. Or it's freezing its hiring in July. One of the two. The point is that purse strings are tight at Yahoo. The news jibes with what we heard shortly after Yahoo reported its first quarter earnings in April, sources told us Yahoo was cutting back on travel expenses. Still, budgeted or no, sometimes Yahoo knows talent when it sees it and goes hard after it. How else to explain the email below? More »
David Windley
Libby Sartain out, Sue Decker underling in at Yahoo HR
A splashy hire for Yahoo in 2001, Libby Sartain's reputation as "Chief People Yahoo" rapidly dwindled. She was pushed out in March, but Yahoo didn't make a big to-do about her successor, David Windley, who was promoted from within. Windley ran HR for the advertiser-and-publisher group when now-president Sue Decker ran it; while Windley reports to CEO Jerry Yang, one's inclined to think his loyalties lie with Decker. Human resources is a useful function to control in the midst of a power grab.
party report
Inside the Facebook Prom
It's true: Facebook held a prom for its employees in San Francisco last night at the Metreon. The shopping mall-cineplex's fourth floor was tastefully decorated with white flowers, and the gathered Facebookers were dressed up — and so youthful, you might think it was an actual prom, save for the booze being poured at the open bars. (Ubiquitous photographee Julia Allison, who was invited, did not attend, staying in New York for a book party instead.) Why throw a prom? Facebook is going all-out for prom season this year, with a tie-in to Sony's Prom Night and a prom-dress partnership with Sears. Why not reward employees working on prom marketing campaigns with a throwback prom of their own? More »
great moments in hr
Decker: Yahoos upset over Microsoft are just tired and old
The people who really matter — Yahoo shareholders — are angry about the way Yahoo CEO Jerry Yang handled negotiations with Microsoft. But there are angry Yahoo employees, too. Problem is, top Yahoo management doesn't seem to want to hear from either group. Watch this excerpt from Tech Ticker as Yahoo president Sue Decker dismisses Yahoo dissenters as people who are "tired and feeling late stages in their career."
great moments in hr
Google works really hard at making sure 25 percent of its engineers are women
Google's business goal is to organize the world's information. Ambitious. Google's goal for hiring women engineers? "We're very focused on having about 25 percent of our technical workforce be women," Google VP Marissa Mayer tells a Bay Area public-radio interviewer in this clip. Google's cupcake princess added that Sergey Brin — he's the cofounder she didn't date — and Larry Page — the one she did — came up with that target shortly after they founded the company.They'd read a lot of research around how to form the best companies and a lot of studies show that if you fall below 20 percent of the workforce being women, things become really imbalanced and unhealthy inside the corporate culture.The silver-lining: Now when Google apologists start going on about the company's "20 percent" rule, the rest of us get to ask: "Wait, which one?"
