I wasn't going to say anything more, but apparently the story is on news.com now. So I guess the cat's out of the bag. Yahoo's [former] Chief Scientist, Udi Manber, is going to be a VP at some big bookstore. He's one of the smartest people I'll probably every meet.
*sigh*
Good luck, Udi. I'm sure it'll be a fun job.
(Did I ever mention that I was supposed to interview at Amazon.com the day after my interview at Yahoo? It never happened because Yahoo was too cool. Ah, the boom years...)
Posted by jzawodn at November 08, 2002 07:54 PM
I have to believe that Udi's leaving to go work for Amazon is stirring up rumblings of unrest, I mean if a guy like Udi -- who will never HAVE to work a day in his life again -- decides to bail on Yahoo and move to its competitor, that's got to have made people like Filo, Zod, Ash, think about things like "corporate mortality". ;-)
I have to think Udi is a special case, among the big boys you mentioned. These guys were there much earlier, and have poured their life's blood in Y! They built Yahoo.
Udi came in the middle of the boom, and was generally left to his own devices to find interesting projects and diversions. He had many valuable contributions to many projects, but overall what did he accomplish? Inside Yahoo is now defunct. The corporate climate has changed completely. Perhaps Amazon is now looking to experiment more, or has offered Udi more real control.
Not sure if one can really say:
"Udi -- who will never HAVE to work a day in his life again..."
Depending on where Udi's stocks were priced when he signed on, he might not be doing as well as you would think. Remember when Yahoo stock was above $200/share? If not, take a look here:
http://finance.yahoo.com/q?s=YHOO&d=c&k=c1&a=v&p=s&t=my&l=on&z=m&q=l
I hope that Udi is getting what he's worth from Amazon. He's a genius.