After I read about what the Yahoo shares fell to this morning I was going to write something that I’d now regret. Thank goodness my friend, Kenneth, over at Investorblogger set me in a new direction.

If you didn’t read his comment you should. He made a lot of sense:

investorblogger Says:
May 5th, 2008 at 2:05 pm e

Having been in the situation where we had to choose between letting go workers and closing our business, I can attest to you that for business owners, nothing focuses the mind more than the prospect not just of losing money but of losing your entire business. While yes, it may be tough for those who are removed, it could be worse for those who aren’t removed, if no one goes. Let’s ask the employees of Enron, Arthur Anderson, etc. who all saw their company disappear in a very short time. And there are major companies right now facing this life and death issue.

It may not be fair, but it’s only when shareholders make money that jobs are created. Have you ever asked a loss making business to add more personnel? … It just can’t happen.

While the workers may worry about job stress, it is far more stressful to face the bankruptcy of your company or lose the wholelot because of a leveraged buyout or whatnot, business mistakes…

The fact remains: employees are employed by one employer (usually), they rely on one source of income, (unlike most businesses), and when problems occur or threaten that source of income, employees naturally feel pressure. But that is the choice they (we?) make when we are poorly informed about the other options out there. I know I made that choice, initially, too.

Kenneth

He’s been there and his points make a lot of sense. What are your thoughts or experiences in this type of situation?

Diana

Again, I’m not a investor person, a money person or a business person…I’m just a person that uses the Internet - a lot. Personally, I prefer Yahoo! for my searches but use Google’s Adsense (coming to this site soon). All this being said, is Yahoo! being a true yahoo or are they making the deal of the century now that they passed on the Microsoft buy-out?

At first, I thought that Chief Exec, Jerry Yang, was about to have his head served for dinner but it appears he wants to pull off a major coo and go into partnership with Google on their searches and possible make a deal with Time Warner Inc’s AOL.

I can’t say that I’m for or against whatever Yahoo! does but the Yahoo! employees need to care because it appears that jobs will be cut whatever deal Yahoo! accepts. Why is it that when mergers happen that jobs are on the line? I can kind of understand some of the upper-crust losing out or moving to other areas because of too many chiefs or duplicate responsibilities. But, can’t Corporate America find a way to save jobs in spite of mergers, buy-outs or acquisitions? Shouldn’t that be paramount? It’s not like the US has a huge surplus of jobs out there to offer these people.

I don’t know, maybe I need to take some business classes (that’ll be the day…not) but it seems this and other mergers are for the shareholders with no thought of the employees that will lose their jobs. And, if this isn’t bad enough…these employees have been dealing with the stress of the Microsoft buy-out for a year now…and it appears it’s only going to get worse before it gets better. Talk about job stress.

Again, loyal American workers lose out to shareholders that will make a lot of money - leaving the loyal workers…out in the dust.

Just my thoughts…I’d love to hear your’s,

~Diana