Marissa Mayer: Yahoo employees are happy. Very happy.

In Yahoo's earnings call, Mayer says more people than ever before want to work for Yahoo

So are Yahoo employees still miffed over the whole no-more-telecommuting thing?

Pfft, naw, says Marissa Mayer (paraphrased).

In today’s earnings call, Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer touched on the topic of employee satisfaction and happiness. As you might recall, in Q1, Mayer sent out a call to all remote employees to haul their cookies back to the office. This caused a big stir among—like, the entire Internet—and rumors of employee discontent ran rampant.

Not so, says Mayer. Attrition has been cut in half and the company is even seeing a steady rise in what it calls “boomerangs”—former employees who left and now want to come back. Mayer said that 14% of all hires in Q1 were “boomerangs.” Altogether, the number of resumes Yahoo received over the quarter tripled.

All eyes are on Yahoo as it reveals its first quarter earnings. Is Marissa Mayer turning Yahoo's core business around? Will Yahoo regain its spot as one of the top Internet companies in the world? Will Lassie get little Timmy out of the well? Stay tuned to find out!

Actually, earnings were mixed today. Yahoo’s Q1 2013 earnings report reveals higher than expected earnings per share, but a slight drop in revenue. Specifically, the company generated $1.07 billion in revenue excluding traffic acquisition costs (ex-TAC), while analysts were expecting $1.1 billion ex-TAC.

Additionally, non-GAAP income from operations was down to $224 million in Q1 2013, compared to $231 million in Q1 2012.

But on the plus side, EPS beat analysts’ expectations at 38 cents per share, while many were expecting 27 cents per share.

“I’ve said before that getting the company growing at the rate I’d like to see would take several years,” said CEO Marissa Mayer in the earnings call. “Our long-term success will be gained in a series of sprints.”

Altogether, Yahoo took home an income of $420 million in the first quarter, an increase of 26% over the same quarter last year.

So it’s a mixed bag, but J.P. Morgan’s Doug Anmuth notes that Yahoo’s engagement rates are higher than ever, particularly among mobile users. The Yahoo.com property saw 9.6 million unique visitors in February 2013, up from 5,500 in January and 5,700 in December 2012. Time spent on Yahoo.com was also up significantly, with users spending over 60 minutes on the site in February, compared to 24 minutes in January and 17 minutes in December.

Some other business highlights in Q1: Mayer said that daily active users were up 50% since Yahoo released its new Yahoo mail app for iOS. And since updating Flickr, photo uploads increased 50% quarter-over-quarter.

Yahoo shares were down 4% in after-hours trading to $22.79.

Image source: npr.org