Yahoo Chief Sales Officer Wenda Harris Millard wondered aloud at the UBS media and communications conference in New York what all the fuss has been about over reports of a brain drain at the Sunnyvale, Calif. Internet company.

When asked about retention at Yahoo at the conference, she said, “I’m sorry that we lost that one person out of 11,000.”

“I don’t know where that got started,” she said, in reference to speculation on Yahoo losing talent. 

 Perhaps the memos haven’t made the rounds about Michael Marquez, Yahoo’s director of corporate development leaving to head up digital strategy and investments at CBS Corp under Quincy Smith. Or the one on Bill Demas, senior VP of Yahoo publishing network, also taking off. Or the notice about Will Johnson, Demas’s deputy, also following him out the door. Perhaps the Wall Street Journal story on the departure of Xie Wen, the president of Alibaba.com Corp., in which Yahoo holds a 40 percent stake, also escaped notice.

Millard said that while there have been some defections from people in their mid 20s — calling them “Mexican jumping beans“ who move from job to job – leaving Yahoo for the likes of MySpace and others, she said, “It cracks me up that here one person leaves and it’s ‘Oh, people are leaving Yahoo.’”

“You are going to get hit on when you have that reputation.” (As a great company, she means). ”We don’t lose people at anything close to the industry average … Our record is really quite exciting.”

(Photo: Yahoo)
(Reporting by Paul Thomasch)