Yammer Bribing Away Yahoo! Employees?

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As if the long-term outlook for Yahoo! (NASDAQ:YHOO) could look any more bleak, social network startup Yammer is offering a clean $25,000 sign-on bonus specifically for Y! employees who defect to its development team within the next 60 days.

As Business Insider reports, Yammer CEO David Sacks made the brash offer as a calculated slight against Yahoo!. Only augmenting the confrontational tone of his announcement, Sacks declared via Twitter that after the declared sign-on period, Yammer would outright refuse to hire former Y! staff again. Sacks concluded the tweet with a blunt “#stopyahoo” hashtag.

David Sacks has expressed very public displeasure with Yahoo!’s ongoing patent litigation against Facebook. He asserts that the legal campaign is not just toxic to Silicon Valley business culture, but is also broadly detrimental to innovation. In a previous interview with Business Insider, Sacks describes eking out profit via patent revenue as a regressive business model, one that may garner profit for Yahoo! but would otherwise hobble the success of potential startups.

David Sacks emphasized that enforcing patents offensively derails newcomers before they have a chance to grow, and has offered a radical solution — abolish the legal right to software patents altogether.

– Adam Patterson, InvestorPlace Assistant Editor


Article printed from InvestorPlace Media, https://investorplace.com/2012/03/yammer-bribing-away-yahoo-employees/.

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