Last week, Yammer CEO, David Sacks offered Yahoo employees a $25,000 signing bonus for those that leave the company, as a form of protest against Yahoo’s patent infringement suit against Facebook.
Sacks wrote in a Twitter post on March 15 that he was "pleased to announce a $25,000 signing bonus for any Yahoo employee who joins Yammer in the next 60 days."
Some employees at Yahoo are not letting the incentive go to waste.
Georg Ell, EMEA General Manager at Yammer, told CBR that Yahoo employees have applied to Yammer in the UK since David Sack’s offer.
"We’ve had some in the UK that have applied since then and they’re very strong candidates," Ell told CBR. Georg added that Yammer "will honour" the $25,000 signing bonus offer.
Sacks asked companies to join him last week in his stand against Yahoo’s patent suit against Facebook, stating that, "Yammer will never hire another former Yahoo employee who doesn’t leave in the next 60 days, who will join me?"
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"I think that David was trying to make a very clear statement and then to back that statement up, so it isn’t just hollow words." Ell told CBR. "He obviously feels very strongly that what Yahoo is doing is wrong and I think he’s had the desired effect of just making it very clear that he feels strongly that what Yahoo is doing is against good industry ethical practice."
Yammer, which calls itself the "world’s leading enterprise social network" has been growing since its launch in late 2008 and has over 4 million users. Yammer has recently raised $85m (£53m) in its fifth round of funding bringing its total funding to $142m (£89m).
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