When Yelp first started building engineering and product teams in Canada in 2019, our plan was to create a workforce based out of our Toronto office. Over the past year as we adapted to being an entirely remote workforce we realized, like many companies, that people don’t need to work in offices to be collaborative… Read more
Yelp and Open To All co-hosted a special Pride panel featuring D&I leaders from H&M, Gap Inc. & The Body Shop during this year’s Pride month. There’s no doubt that companies like these help shape our society, but with power comes responsibility. During this event the panelist discussed the realities of corporate “rainbow-washing,” the responsibility… Read more
This year marks the start of Yelp recognizing Juneteenth as a global paid holiday. Observed on Friday, June 18, Juneteenth (also known as Freedom Day or Emancipation Day) is known as the day that commemorates the end of slavery in the United States and recognizes Black freedom and achievement. We invited Dr. Marguerite Hinrichs to… Read more
In May, our Chief Operating Officer Jed Nachman talked with Elizabeth MacBride and Seth Levine, authors of “The New Builders.” In their book they discuss entrepreneurship and small businesses from a new angle. At Yelp, we connect people with great local businesses, so we were very eager to learn more about this fascinating topic. Here… Read more
In May, Yelp launched an Asian-owned business attribute to make it even easier to find and support local Asian-owned businesses. With the escalation of anti-Asian hate crimes and violence we’ve seen across the nation during the pandemic, there has never been a more important time to support the Asian American community. For the attribute launch,… Read more
The path to LGBTQ+ equality continues to be a rocky one. On one hand, the Biden administration recently announced that gay and transgender people will (once again) be protected from discrimination in health care. At the same time, we are experiencing a wave of anti-transgender legislation across the nation. My first foray into LGBTQ+ workplace… Read more
To celebrate Pride Month, Yelp is making it easier than ever for consumers to support businesses that align with their values, and find safe and welcoming places to enjoy Pride celebrations all month long. Starting today, Yelp is introducing an LGBTQ-owned business attribute that will allow business owners to self identify as LGBTQ-owned. In addition,… Read more
For years, Yelp continued to use an interview process that was created when we were a 50-200 person Engineering organization, with only a handful of interviewers: Each interviewer wrote their own interview questions A few senior leaders gave overall hire/no hire decisions for every panel Interviewers received ad hoc feedback from senior leaders when it… Read more
Compared to where we started, Yelp’s technical organization has made a lot of headway over the years when it comes to diverse hiring. While our approach to this work continues to evolve, we’ve made significant progress in improving the diversity of our organizations by, among other things, reducing gender and ethnicity bias in our interview… Read more
On International Women’s Day, March 8, Yelp’s women’s group – Women at Yelp (WAY) – came together for a virtual networking event. Carolyn Patterson (Chief People Officer) and Miriam Warren (Chief Diversity Officer), welcomed everyone. Afterward, attendees split into breakout groups for discussion. This was an opportunity for all WAY members to connect, get to… Read more