Yahoo

Frankly, I took a lot of pride in the opportunity to work on technology that got used by so many people. I learned an awful lot about what it takes to keep a website reliable.

At its best, it encouraged the creativity of its engineers and designers. They were very concerned about the feedback they got from customers; I felt I really knew what the public thought of our technology and what we needed to do to improve it. The competence level of engineers and designers was high. A couple of years back, it felt as if what we did was really going to change the world.

Yahoo! had a constant flow of fun events and interesting presentations by knowledgeable speakers. They treated us well. The facilities, with the fitness centers and cafeterias, were great. I got the opportunity to travel overseas a couple of times, which broadened my view of the world.

Some problems were well known:

Yahoo! lacked a clear vision from upon high.

There were intergroup rivalries; your world may have been reproduced by someone at some other location, and they would try to undercut you in favor of their own group.

Planning was weak; many deadlines were missed, largely because people had not properly calculated the resources that were needed.

The last year I was there, my group realized they had not planned adequately in the past, and overcompensated by insisting on a rather bureaucratic process which killed off much of our group's innovation.

I don't think this was a widespread problem in Yahoo!, but in my specific situation I dealt with a couple managers who came off as particularly manipulative.

I didn't form friendships of the sort I had at other employers; there was a bit of a revolving door.

It's hard to know what to do with it. Handing search and search advertising to Microsoft may have been a huge mistake, but time will tell.