News broke this week that a number of senior Yahoo engineers are leaving. Despite the fact that all of them stressed that their walkouts have nothing to do with the now-failed Microsoft merger, there"s a good chance that that"s probably what it is.
Jeremy Zawodny and JR Conlin, two Yahoo veterans with 18 years of tenure between them have resigned. Usama Fayyad, Yahoo"s chief data officer, and Jeff Weiner, head of Yahoo"s Web-content properties have resigned too. Fayyad, is planning to return to Microsoft, reports say.
A number of analysts and commentators have also speculated that the buyout offer may have been put forward as a means of pushing the company towards disarray and, subsequently, towards a mismanaged doomsday. Microsoft has used buyout proposals for this purpose before, and Yahoo"s board might have kept this (and ego) in mind when trying to negotiate a higher per-share price.