The Gold House Founders Network
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
Fireside Chat with Yelp Board Member, George Hu
To better connect our employees with leadership in 2021, we began hosting quarterly conversations with members from Yelp’s board (in February we talked to Tony Wells). For this quarter’s installment, we invited George Hu. George joined Yelp’s Board of Directors in February of 2019, and in addition to this crucial role for Yelp, he currently… Read more
Mental Health Awareness Month at Yelp
May is Mental Health Month, a time to raise awareness on the importance of caring for and communicating openly about our mental health, and we understand the impact that mental health has on different aspects of our lives. Improving our mental health and wellbeing can take many forms, including talk therapy, exercise, and social connection. … Read more
Hand-lettering Mother’s Day Cards with Punkpost
In preparation for Mother’s Day, we invited Yelp employees to attend a hand-lettering class to create a Mother’s Day greeting card framed with flowers and doodles for the moms in their life. All they had to bring were colorful markers, paper, and a hefty dose of creativity. For this event, we partnered with Punkpost, a… Read more
Drag Queen Story Hour at Yelp
In celebration of Take Your Kids To Work Day, we invited Yves Saint Croissant to read a few stories to Yelp employees and their little ones. Yves is a longtime member of the Drag Queen Story Hour, which was started in 2015 by author and activist Michelle Tea and a handful of Queens in San… Read more
Engineering Career Series: Career paths for engineers at Yelp
About 5 years after joining Yelp, I was managing several teams in our Hamburg, Germany office and asked my manager, a director at the time, what were the expectations for an engineering manager versus a director. While the conversation was helpful to me at that moment, the gist was basically “we haven’t written that down.”… Read more
Engineering Career Series: How we onboard engineers across the world at Yelp
Like most companies, Yelp has had to make substantial changes to the way we onboard new team members over the past year. Yelpers have always been naturally good at fostering a welcoming and supportive atmosphere for new employees. Translating this into a welcoming and supportive virtual atmosphere hasn’t happened organically. As we grow distributed teams… Read more
Returning to Yelp Offices in 2021
Over the last year, we learned that we can operate successfully as a distributed remote workforce, which we attribute to the tenacity of Yelp employees. While we plan to continue to operate as a distributed workforce when we return to the office, we know that some employees are looking forward to having flexible access to… Read more
Engineering Career Series: Using structured interviews to improve equity
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
Asian Pacific Islander Heritage Month: An Allyship Resource Guide
At Yelp, we see allyship as far more than an identifier. We believe developing ally skills requires genuine intention, curiosity, and empathy. Above all, being an ally is a verb, and an ever evolving journey. As part of our efforts to promote authentic allyship and to help educate our employees, we’ve created a series of… Read more