[brooknam]

This goes a bit far. I am sure there are fine folks at Yahoo who have achieved seniority that they need to support their families. They may object to how the company does business, but can't just walk away job. Is the hiring situation in the Valley really so intense that anyone could find new work in 60 days?

[msbarnett]

> Is the hiring situation in the Valley really so intense that anyone could find new work in 60 days?

If you can program your way out of a paper bag and find your ass with both hands and a google search, yeah.

Which isn't to say that everyone can feasibly walk away in 60 days. If you're waiting for compensation to vest after an acquisition by Yahoo!, say.

[Tossrock]

This is patently untrue. I have a friend who graduated from UCLA with a computing minor who was working (unpaid) in a Stanford lab who couldn't find paying work for over 9 months. And no, he is not some kind of idiot, he got a 2390 on the new SAT and even showers regularly.

[msbarnett]

The hiring situation with no experience is a slightly different beast, particularly if you're not involved in open source or otherwise generating a lot of public code that people can look at.

People are rightly wary of hiring untested kids fresh out of college because so many of the just plain cannot program their way out of a paper bag. Not to accuse your friend of incompetence, it's just that until you have some kind of real portfolio, it's damn hard to sort the wheat from the chaff.

[encoderer]

Any talented engineer, yes.

So either you're soulless and refuse to leave, or you're incompetent and you're scared to leave. Either way, not hiring them seems fair to me.

[bullseye]

>> So either you're soulless and refuse to leave, or you're incompetent and you're scared to leave

So... in your world, everyone (not soulless and incompetent) is currently employed where they agree 100% with the direction and vision of the company as dictated by management. If, sometime in the future, they don't agree with management decisions, their only course of action is to give notice and leave. Pensions, security, and seniority be damned. Since they must also do this within 60 days (more than enough time according to Yammer), having another job lined up is not guaranteed either.

Maybe I missed the part where Yammer would automatically hire ex-Yahoo employees on the spot, at the same pay-rate and bonus structure, if they quit within 60 days?

[bandy]

Any talented engineer under the age of 30, yes. (Corollary: any engineer over the age of 30 has no talent in the eyes of the Valley)

[zackattack]

This is stupid, untrue and counter productive.

I'll put my money where my mouth is. Know a talented engineer over the age of 30? Or 40? Or 50? I know several prestigious firms that would be eager to hire her. Contact me and I'll share my referral bounty with you.

[bandy]

There have been a number of studies that come to this basic conclusion. Please see Prof. Norm Matloff's pages (UC Davis) http://heather.cs.ucdavis.edu/pub/Immigration/ImmigAndComput..., http://www.tbp.org/pages/publications/Bent/Features/Su09Brow... which tacitly touches on the subject, many articles in the San Jose Murky News about engineers who can't find work (and who just so happen to be "older"), a Congressional report finding that the one of the industry's associations that goes about lamenting the engineer shortage misrepresented their data: http://www.gao.gov/corresp/he98159r.pdf and let's finish with a tidbit from the IEEE: http://www.ieeeusa.org/careers/employment/age.html

Oh darn it, you said "her", which would be an EEOC win for said corporation (if they had been feeling legal pressure), although women in the profession suffer age discrimination as well - being less numerous, you don't hear about it nearly as much.

[brnstz]

The CEO of Yammer is free to hire whomever he wants, but saying you're either soulless or incompetent is a false dichotomy. Just because your employer's use of patents isn't the most important factor in your life doesn't make you soulless. There are much more controversial topics on which reasonable people disagree.

[prodigal_erik]

There are few other topics which can threaten the very independence of our profession. That said, patent trolls don't really need engineers—any sociopath who can afford a patent agent can trick the beleaguered USPTO examiners into rubber-stamping an absurdly overbroad patent that claims an entire problem. I'm a little surprised Yahoo didn't assign their patents to some troll who can't be counter-sued.

[brown9-2]

Things are rarely that cut and dry. That "soulless" programmer could be locked into a contract from an acquisition, or have other reasons that I don't think warrant a presumptuous "soulless" label.

[robryan]

Maybe that "soulless" programmer is enjoying their job working on interesting tech, far removed from the actions of upper management.

[jordhy]

I agree. This statement seems like an overreaction of Yammer's CEO.