BoomTown has learned that AOL is offering those who “volunteer” to leave the company now a departure package that ranges from three to nine months of pay, compared to one to four months for employees laid off in the first quarter of next year.
It’s a depressing rock-and-a-hard-place choice.
An AOL spokesperson confirmed the offer, which is part of a massive layoff of 2,500 of its 6,000-person workforce.
Allen Olivo, SVP of global brand marketing at Yahoo, is leaving the company, according to sources.
The departure is the latest at Yahoo, as major executive changes continue. It was announced today internally, which Yahoo confirmed to BoomTown.
Olivo was responsible for all aspects of its advertising and brand marketing strategy worldwide for Yahoo, which is about to undergo a major new push under CEO Carol Bartz.
Yahoo’s SVP of Northern American Audience, Jeff Dossett, is leaving the company.
Reasons for the departure are personal, said sources, who said that Dossett is most likely to do a start-up.
Dossett did not return emails asking for comment, but Yahoo confirmed his resignation to BoomTown.
At least he’s not going to Microsoft!
But nonetheless, sources said another major Yahoo tech exec and a longtime company veteran, Venkat Panchapakesan, EVP of the Audience Technology Group, is readying his departure from the company. This time, it’s to return to India, where he has long told colleagues he wanted to return.
Sources said Panchapakesan will not be leaving until the end of the summer, but “his departure is well along the road.”
Jill Nash, Yahoo’s chief communications officer, has told CEO Carol Bartz and other Yahoo staff this afternoon that she is leaving the company.
Nash, sources said, told staff that she does not have any plans to move to another company immediately, so the reasons for her departure are unclear.
BoomTown would have to guess that Nash is simply completely spent from her past two years at Yahoo, which have been very fraught from a public relations perspective, to say the least.
Here’s the internal Yahoo memo from President Sue Decker about the stepping down of Yahoo European head, Toby Coppel, which BoomTown wrote about here.
The departure, which has been in the works for months, is not related to the recent news that Yahoo CEO Jerry Yang is also relinquishing his job as soon as the company completes its search for another CEO.
His successor will be Rich Riley, who is currently SVP of Europe’s Advertiser & Publisher Group.
Here’s the memo.
Aside from upcoming layoffs, it seemed as if Yahoo had stanched the flow of major execs from the company.
Not so, it seems, as sources with knowledge of the situation confirm that the two top execs of the troubled Internet company’s media unit will be announcing their departures later this week.
SVP Scott Moore, who runs Yahoo’s media group out of its offices in Santa Monica, Calif., and also Al Warms, who came to Yahoo from its BuzzTracker acquisition last year, will both be leaving, although it is not clear what their plans are.
Here’s one certainty in the hubbub that has resulted in the wake of the departure of high-profile exec Ben Ling from Facebook last week: COO Sheryl Sandberg is definitely not responsible for the melting of the polar ice caps.
That’s the joking question–Was global warming Sandberg’s fault too?–that was asked at a staff meeting at the social networking start-up last Friday afternoon, after the news of Ling’s departure, on the heels of some other previous employee exits, suddenly morphed into a series of increasingly vituperative posts on the Valleywag tech gossip site that all centered on what blogger Owen Thomas called Sandberg’s “reign of terror” at Facebook.
The truth of the situation, though, is actually a lot more interesting.
BoomTown was press-ganged into attending an afternoon showing of “Kung Fu Panda” with a pair of six-year-olds (who afterwards hiii-yaaa-kicked every trash can in sight), or I would have posted Yahoo President Sue Decker’s letter to the troops she sent out today about the departure of Network division head Jeff Weiner earlier.
Actually, the movie about a misfit who conquers despite the odds would make a nice metaphor for Yahoo these days, especially if the company could be motivated to excellence simply by a desire for tasty dumplings.
Kara Swisher started covering digital issues for The Wall Street Journal's San Francisco bureau in 1997 and also wrote the BoomTown column about the sector. With Walt Mossberg, she co-produces and co-hosts D: All Things Digital, a major high-tech and media conference. Read more »
Here is a statement of my ethics and coverage policies. It is more than most of you want to know, but, in the age of suspicion of the media, I am laying it all out.
D is unlike any other executive conference. Since its debut in 2003, D has brought to life the energy and excitement of the digital revolution in an unscripted, upfront and unparalleled way. Read more »
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