With a certain percentage of Yahoos unwilling to work for Microsoft, recruiters are in a feeding frenzy. They know that this is a great opportunity to snatch up employees that would have otherwise been perfectly content with Yahoo! for many years to come.

Break off into a quick tangent to dispel a myth — Some may say, what about the Change in Control Severance Plan that was put in place to "line the pockets of Yahoo! employees"? Well, in my opinion, it does not benefit most Yahoo employees as the media would have us believe. Some may think that this is incentive for Yahoos to stay. However, it only kicks in if Microsoft fires Yahoo employee, or the Yahoo employee leaves for "Good Reason", ie, if they ask Yahoo employee to relocate to Redmond. Does "Good Reason" include the moral conflict of working for a company with a history of unscrupulous business practices? Apparently not, but that’s another story that I won’t discuss publicly.

</tangent>

Anyway, back to Pavlovian recruiters. In a less-than-scientific-completely-informal survey, a co-worker in a nearby cube says he has received 8 phone calls and 2 invitations from LinkedIn in the last two weeks. I just counted 19 e-mails, phone calls, or LinkedIn invitations I’ve received in the past two weeks. Search engine traffic to my resume has gone up 300% in the past month. In looking at the keywords that users are searching for to find my resume in the last few days, there are some interesting findings. Note how much "yahoo" is being searched on:

nick sullivan yahoo
software architect sample resumes
"my resume" and (nyc or "new york") and ("java programmer" or "software programmer" or "database design")
"nick sullivan" resume
"technical yahoo" php perl mysql
(intitle:"resume for" | intitle:"resume of") (programmer or programer or developer) framework
architect resume
chief software architect resume
css ajax web content develop (inurl:resume | intitle:resume) 94000..95000
database and engineer and architect and php (intitle:resume) 94002..95196
database engineer architect php (intitle:resume) 94002..95196
evox sunnyvale
intitle:resume inurl:resume network engineer "load balancing" "new york"
lead software architect resume
nick sullivan resume
php resume santa clara
project manager resume, automotive
resume builder software architect
resume yahoo maps development lead
resumes+php developer+ct
sample cv of software architect
sample resume of a chief software architect
technical architect and resume and new york
yahoo php developer resume
yahoo sunnyvale resume

Now, the deeper question. What does this mean for Yahoo!? What does this mean for Microsoft? This can’t be good for Yahoo, and it’s not good for Microsoft either, even if the hostile takeover fails. Why? Let’s take a look.

  • Yahoos are going to to Google — Where are the Yahoos that leave disgruntled most likely to go? Yes, that’s right, they will go to the very competitor that Microsoft is supposedly teaming up with Yahoo to beat! Great job Microsoft, you are kicking the best talent from your #2 competitor to your #1 competitor. Yet another argument that debunks the team up against Google myth.
  • Yahoos are going to startups that will compete with Microsoft — Freed from the burdens of getting work done in a large company (read: it’s ok to hack things together at a startup), innovation will explode. And when they get there, will they call up and recruit their former Yahoo! co-workers? You bet they will!
  • Yahoos are forming start ups of their own that will compete with Microsoft — I’ve been approached by 2 different Yahoo co-workers that are starting companies of their own, ideas that have been lingering for a while but were jump started because of the Microsoft threat. One is an online payment system (I can’t say more), and the other is a meta search for travel. These 2 people were otherwise content Yahoo employees that would have gladly continued their employment.

The climate in the Bay Area seems more frenzied than I’ve seen since 1999. With new startups being formed and existing startups being flooded with good talent, we are about to see a surge in innovation. We should see some very interesting products and ideas hit the market in 3-6 months.