Ryan Kennedy, a fellow Yahoo, recently wrote about an experience I've had more than a few times: interviewing with another company, receiving a good offer, and ultimately deciding to stay at Yahoo.
I hadn’t really set out to look for a new job, but the idea was enticing. A healthy company, good environment, smart people, fun products. The choice ahead of me was pretty obvious. So obvious that I threw caution to the wind, declined the offer and stayed at Yahoo!
If I'm counting right, that's happened to me roughly five times in the last 6 or 7 years. It's not that I was dying to get out of Yahoo, but I was certainly curious to see what else the world had to offer. And then there are the dozen or so other companies I've casually talked to without going through a formal interview process.
Like Ryan, many of my "job shopping" experiences happened during times that things felt rather down around here. He describes the current situation thusly:
I’m not going to lie to you, it’s rough going right now. We get smacked around by the media. It’s been a while since we had a really big, notable win. I think morale at the company is low, the future uncertain and the food still sucks (although, I’ve had worse). But despite that, we had a record turnout for our last internal hack day. We had so many people with ideas that we had to completely change the format of the event because the campus could no longer scale to meet our demands. There is still plenty fight in this company and we have no shortage of asses to kick. So lace up all you Yahoo!’s... the ass won’t kick itself.
I couldn't agree more. The ass certainly won't kick itself.
I've been involved in a lot of ambitious discussions in the last few weeks. They're all about aspects of Yahoo's future and how to get more of that ass kicked. I don't claim to know what the future holds, but I'm still here.
Posted by jzawodn at September 13, 2007 04:13 PM
I'm glad you're staying there, I am rooting for Yahoo to kick some ass!
Jeremy,
I just became a Yahoo four days ago, but I've been reading your blog for months. I had the opposite experience from you. I was working at a top-notch company, great financials, strong morale, good products, a Wall Street darling. And after interviewing at Yahoo, the choice was obvious -- I bolted.
Let me give you my outsider's view -- the people here are fun, the ideas are flowing, and the feeling from all around is that the worst is behind us and the future is shiny. I'm thrilled to be here. Also, the food really ain't that bad, and at least it exists.
Keep up the great work.
As an ex-Yahoo business unit manager, I believe the whole media coverage of Yahoo has been exaggerated. Yahoo, as a company is very healthy, with over a billion in cash reserve, growing diversified online media businesses. It is true that in Paid Search, Yahoo is smaller compared to the giant Google, however one good point is also that Yahoo's $2 billion in revenue is very well diversified and this will be valuable should there be downturn in paid-search spending.
I'm glad to hear that other people have done this. I recently interviewed for a new job and was made an offer which I turned down, then they made me an even better offer. I still can't say exactly why I decided to stay with my current employer, even when I could have had about a 10% pay increase. I wouldn't say it's an undying loyalty or anything. I think it had more to do with the fact that things are comfortable here and changing jobs when I have no concerns about losing my current job is kind of risky.
Eric, welcome aboard! As for the food...you'll see in a few months. ;)
Yahoo is already kicking ass. The YUI library, for instance, has not generated the buzz of Prototype/Scriptaculous, but it's actually the best, most thoughtful and solid javascript library out there. Over time, I think it will become a favorite of enterprise and tinkerer alike (best documentation out there will make it hard to resist).
If asynchronous requests, cross-browser capability, progressive enhancement, and rich user experiences aren't important right now, I don't know what is. Yahoo is at the forefront, and developers are noticing. Users won't be far behind.
I think yahoo is definitely on the rebound with products like pipes, hadoop, performant portal etc.
Few months back I had replaced by browser homepage to google from yahoo (after years of using yahoo as home page). Lately I've been very impressed with yahoo.com's performance and will probably switch back to yahoo.
Keep up the competition. Hadoop is a prefect example of commoditizing the google's single biggest asset right now that is scalability and redundancy.
Jeremy, good to see how human you've become through all the trials and tribulations. I *truly* hope life serves you all the best it has to offer. What's that Chinese proverb?... "May you live in interesting times." (Just not TOO interesting while you're gliding)
I'm still laughing at the Google ads under the article which include (1) "Meet Hairy Gay singles" (2) "Hot Girl pictures"; and (3) "Woman kick boxing"
...must have something to do with Ass in the text of the article
Hold on there - aren't several of the TechCrunch 40 companies making asses that will kick themselves?
