The Brownian motion of Valley employment has over the years shuffled quite a number of my prior colleagues and acquaintances into the Yahoo ranks. And several of them are leaving there as part of the big RIF. On the list so far:
Randy Farmer and Chip Morningstar
Brad Horowitz. (To be clear, I'm claiming acquaintance on the basis of a couple of casual conversations. He's gone to Google voluntarily, but just ahead of serious butchery in the units he was running, so call it what you will.)
Hard to make a pattern out of just these, but if I add in other news that's filtering out, the axe seems to be falling hardest on staff, corporate level resources, particularly design and R&D, and anyone not immediately attached to a revenue center. Many of these areas developed over the years as attempts to work around innovation bottlenecks in the revenue centers. Cutting them away will save money for sure, but if the bottlenecks (and those responsible) are not blown up at the same time, the fundamental problem of Yahoo (too slow!) will still remain.