As we all know, alumni networks from past companies are great ways to get jobs, Ross Mayfield's Socialtext is going to be right there helping those folks make it happen.

Ross writes: "Today, Socialtext is meeting this latent need with a free Corporate Social Network offer for the 2009 Recession. Any former employee and HR director of a company that reduced its workforce by 5% or more in the last year can create a private Corporate Social Network for free by applying here. Please note that this offer does not include free user support. We ask for an HR contact to be involved to encourage a constructive tone, enable the HR department to share informational resources and so the company can leverage the network over time for connections, knowledge and expertise. However, as was our experience with the PeopleSoft Alumni Network, the energy and participation will likely be driven by the grass-roots."

Susan sez: This is clever, and cool. We're going to need a directory for all these support tools!

So the latest round of big Yahoo! layoffs is done, and the people picking up the pieces at Big Purple can draw their wagons closer together and hunker down in the bunker and all that good stuff--at least until they take two weeks off over the holidays.

Before we all move on, however, it's worth noting the amazing transparency around this layoff--the flickr photos, the tweets, the friend feed posts.

I'm hoping some of the ex-Yahoos! document their next moves with equal transparency--Yahoo! let go some amazing people, including George Oates, the first flickr designer and the Brickhouse crew, including the wonderful Jeannie Yang, and a whole host of talented coders and engineers.

"Thank you, Aarom, for coming in. I have some information regarding our organization that I want to tell you in person.This was a very difficult business decision supported by senior management.  I appreciate what you have done for Yahoo! What is important right now is to focus on what is next for you."

--Start of reputed Yahoo! layoff script obtained by Valleywag, to be used in today's mass layoffs at Big Purple.

"The real world won't change for the better till 2010, when greed has overcome fear yet again."

--Martin Sorrell, the chief executive at WPP, commenting on the dismal year ahead of advertising, particularly for newspapers, when speaking at a recent media/ad summit in NYC discussed in a NYTimes article.

Kara Swisher's sharing that this Wednesday is the date for the next round of Yahoo! layoffs. She's predicting 1,500 to 2,000 jobs vaporized, adding lots more out of work in the Bay area, NYC and Santa Monica.

While there's something morbid about companies that do lavish holiday parties and then sever staff, it's more distressing to read that Yahoo's plan is to  eliminate whole projects and move divisions between managers.

As some one who was laid off from Yahoo! 10 months ago, reading this new makes me want to scream, loudly, something along the lines of "Senior managers at Yahoo!, you who have options vested and big salary cushions, when are you going to quit playing hot potato passing groups back and forth, funding and then starving projects every three-six months, and create a coherent strategy that might make a difference?"

Another thing that worries me is that, even with all the executive departures of the past year--the  Microsofties who came, drove people out and left, the  VPs and SVPs who went on to other roles (at Microsoft, venture funds and wherever) enough of the top management remains to suggest that this layoff, like the last big one, is going to be executed by people who don't have a clue how to manage human capital.

Last go round, as whole departments and projects were cut, some of the most skilled staffers in areas like interactive design, product management and program management were let go.  In other words, you could be top talent on a project, but if that project was cut, honey, you were toast.

Why would this go-round be any different?
 
Since Yahoo! is cutting by the numbers, we have to assume they're going to let some of the strongest people go again, perhaps to try to (quietly) later rehire, as also happened last time. So think about it--when those self-satisfied announcements go out, about the "deep cuts and the bright future that lies ahead", those left with out jobs in a deepening recession right before Christmas will have the comfort of knowing they weren't let go because they were the bottom 10%, they were let go because their managers fail to convince their bosses that those projects were ones that mattered. (And since the big bosses didn't know most of those people, great talent was let go, while deadwood remained ( and remained.)

Is it going to be like that this time (again)? Or it is going to be different? Wanna place some bets?

Layoffs are  always tough, and yes, sometimes you have to slash to the bone.

But I'm hoping that this time Yahoo! is (finally) able to apply some smarts in the human capital area. Maybe this time the huge upheavals and chaos this reduction in force will create actually leaves the best and brightest--not the most plodding and dutiful--on staff at Big Purple.

Either way, I feel for everyone losing their jobs.

So Qi Lu has just been confirmed as the new head of online services for Microsoft. Qi Lui is a brilliant guy and they must be thrilled to have him, but if I was one of the workers riding the wifi bus to Yahoo!, or an exec wondering if about the upcoming round of staff cuts, I'd be feeling pretty bitter right now.

I mean, not only has Yahoo! lost incredible stock value in the past 18 months, it's lost amazing talent.  After all, if you don't have a strategy, how do you know what you need to accomplish and who you (really) need to keep? And if you don't know what you're focusing on in the big picture, how can you keep the best performers signed up and interested?

My guess is that Microsoft is going to do a better job keeping Qi Lu than Yahoo! has done with many of the non-sales Microsofties they have hired, many of whom came, created reorgs, and then left. Of course, given the number of people the two companies have been trading back and forth over the past 18 months, there's no need at all to buy anything, is there?