Startups woo Yahoo’s sacked engineers
08 Oct 2014
The large scale lay off by internet giant Yahoo is unlikely to make any big difference in the prospects of its R&D and engineering unit in India as emerging IT companies have already made a beeline for experienced IT talent.
In fact, this could be a god send for many who are being offered even bigger pay packs, with the five-month severance pay turning out to be a Diwali bonus.
Yahoo laid off around 300-500 employees in India, mostly engineers, as the company is looking to consolidate its operations in the country.
According to an official statement, the firm is taking its R&D operations to the US, while India will remain an operations and support centre.
The company has offered positions to select engineers at its US centre.
Top executives of some firms have gone public on the social media with an open invitation to join them.
Ant Farm's founder Rishi Khiani tweeted that the incubator is hiring developers: ''We have over 100 open positions. So please pass this on to any developers over at Yahoo that just got sacked.''
Pradyot Ghate, associate vice president at Zomato wrote on the micro-blogging service: ''Don't just go ogle, apply. We are always hiring.''
''Impacted by Yahoo India layoff? Minjar Cloud is hiring engineers for product engineering roles. Drop a note to careers@minjar.com,'' reads a Tweet from Vijay Rayapati, CEO of Minjar.
Satyan Gajwani, CEO of Times Internet Limited, the digital arm of the Times of India group, tweeted, ''Yahoo techies! Want to work on all sorts of hard problems on products that millions of Indians use? Join us.''
Yahoo's operations in India comprise of two units like most global IT firms - one involved in software development for the parent and another unit which looks after the local business operations.
According to a senior employee working at Yahoo India, there were around 3,000 employees for the firm in India until a couple of years ago, and now there are just 500-odd employees left. The company has also shut down two offices and now there is only remaining.