Farewell Yahoo!
Friday was my last day at Yahoo!.
Five years.
Three years longer than I thought I’d be there, and two years longer than I had to be. I was introduced into an amazingly intricate industry I never knew about, watched something I created flounder, rebuilt something I created into something amazing again, and saw three CEOs try and do a reboot to something the likes of what Apple, Old Spice, and Oil of Olay have done… but just not quite get it right. I saw brilliant people create amazing things that I wish could have seen the light of day or be appropriately appreciated. I saw people rise up into the senior ranks and catapult their careers. I saw people date, get married and have kids.
But the most important thing that happened there is that I made some amazing friends. People I’m proud to have met and worked with and people I hope to get the chance to work with again someday. As a friend once said “starting to thank people is a very slippery slope”, and that’s true, so here’s my short list. A list that’s 1/100th of the length it should be, but these are folks that one way or another changed the way I thought, that I thought were brilliant, were of invaluable help to me in some way, or have become good close friends:
Anne Hoge, Ash Patel, Bradley Horowitz, Catherine Snelgrove, Cindy Van Wassenhove, Cory Pforzheimer, Crystal Chaboya, Dan Rosensweig, Daniella Jorge, David Filo, Gary Clayton, Jeanie Caringello, Geoff Ralston, Keith Saft, Kelly Ireland, Kevin Driscoll, Lucas Mast, Lulu Khoo, Marco Boerries, Michael Marquez, Michael Mills, Neil Smith, Pablo Pissanetzky, Pamela Mead, Patrick Barry, Pedro Navaro, Rob Marquardt, Roger Urrabazo, Sam Magnuson, Scott Derrenger, Shannon Kiesling, Stanley Kim, Toni Schneider, and Zealous Wiley.
I’m sure I forgot to add you to this list, [insert name here]. You had a huge influence as well.
So why did I leave? It was time. I’ve never been somewhere five years, and I thrive on creating products and the teams that enable them to be built. You only get a few rare chances to do that at a company the size of Yahoo!, and I think I did a pretty damn good job of it where I had the chance. But it’s time to do the next thing.
