I Played Yahtzee With Yahoo (Part 1)
I apologize for the length of time it has taken me to getting around to telling the Yahoo! story. Again, for those interested in Vegas content, you can go ahead and skip this. For those interested in the innerworkings of a multi-billion dollar company’s human resources cycle, fire up some microwave popcorn, crack open a root beer and settle in for a root’n toot’n good time. Also note: unlike the Google story, I didn’t bother changing the names to protect the innocent, you’ll find out why later.
Sometime last year (2006) I got quite pissed off at the continual politics and nonsense at my current job (i’ve since quit - yay! but more on that later…). A bunch of other co-workers of mine also got sick of the crap and got other jobs. A few of them got gigs at the recently formed Yahoo Media Group (YMG) over in Santa Monica California. The word on the street is that Yahoo! has been hiring like mad and is lookin for the best people around. Being quite experienced in this whole internet thing - i’ve been in the biz since 1999, and built my first websites in 96 - i figured “wtf, why not, i like their stuff, use their site and i’m ready for a new challenge.”
After a particularly difficult day at work dealing with an incredibly arrogant, know-it-all rookie project manager I woke up in the middle of the night, wandered across my flat to my computer, fired up jobs.yahoo.com and put in my application. The whole process took about 30 minutes and I was back snoring before you could say ‘Zoozacrackers’ five times fast. I woke up the next day, continued to do battle with the butthole du jour, completely forgetting about my late night rendezvous with Yahoo!’s electronic recruitment device.
A few weeks later i got an email requesting to set up a ‘phone interview’ with a Technical Yahoo. They’d ask me a bunch of questions and then decide whether or not I was Yahoo material or not. The day of the phone interview came and I ducked out into the alleyway behind the day job and spoke with a Yahoo by the name of Jay. Mr. Jay grilled me on a ton of very technical aspects of programming, objects, ajax, the DOM, semantic code, section 508 accessibility, unobtrusive javascript and a bunch more. He also told me that the job was to work on “Family/Kids” content sections for Yahoo. GROSS. I hate families, and hate children even more. Fortunately for me, I pretty much whiffed the technical interview part. Jay still seemed interested and asked me to send him some code samples, which I did later that day. A week went by and no word from Jay. Two weeks, nothing. I emailed him to say “hey what’s up, you asked me for something, i sent it, and you never acknowledged.” He emailed back with a curt thank you and that he didn’t think I was right for this specific job but another Yahoo was interested in my services. A week or two later another Yahoo (i forgot his name) emailed me and asked if i’d be interested in working on Yahoo! Sports section of the website. I pretty much told him that I hate sports and I don’t think I’d be interested in doing it. Click. I’m doing a great job selling myself here.
Wednesday August 25, 2006
A third Yahoo, this one is named Steve, emailed me to set up phone interview, this time the project was a little bit more nebulous but it had something to do with “TV” (not the tv.yahoo.com section thats out now, something else - i’ll get to that later). We set up some time to chat a few days later. The day and hour for the phone interview finally came and I made my way out of the office into the alley way to field more technical questions. Steve pretty much repeated a lot of Jay’s questions, but I did quite a bit better the second time around - I did my homework this time 
. He sensed that I knew what I was talking about even if my understanding of direct terminology wasn’t exactly 100% spot on. I must add that this job was for more of a “programmer type” than a design/interface type, which is more my comfort zone. Either way we hit it off and talked about Eddie Van Halen, two-fingered-tapping techniques, and other guitar histrionics before hanging up. I really liked this guy and could see myself working with him. Very cool dude.
Wednesday September 26th, 2006
So a week went by and I heard nothing. Two weeks… nothing. Three weeks… nothing. By that time I had forgotten about Yahoo completely. Of course I get another email (Sep 26th to be exact), this time from someone named Amir.
Steve and I talked to you over the phone about 1.5 weeks ago. We have went through our pool of candidates and you came up as one of the few that we would like to invite on site for a face to face interview. I will be coming up from San Diego Thursday afternoon, and was wondering if you will be able to make it to our Santa Monica office Friday morning (Around 10am).
Feel free to give me a call as well if you would like to arrange a time over the phone. My phone number is 619-XXX-XXXX
Looking forward to meeting you in person,
Amir
Well. Ok… I’m kinda feeling that this whole thing is quite bizarre. I never spoke to this Amir guy before, and certainly it wasn’t a week and a half ago. I’m beginning to feel that I’m the “also ran” in this equation, the ‘guy they bring in for interviews to compare the guy they really want to hire’ to. Amir and I touched base and set up a time for me to roll on out to the Yahoo Media Center for some face time.
Friday September 29, 2006
I made some bullshit excuse about taking the day off. Actually, I used a “you did a good job, now here’s a free day off coupon” that the dorks at the dayjob give out from time to time. I find great satisfaction using these for job interview days (i’ve done it twice 
). Friday morning, I drive the wife to work, hop in the car and head over to Santa Monica for the in-person interview. I used to live right near there so I know the neighborhood real well. I got there about 40 minutes early, had a cup of joe, read the news on the work-provided blackberry and generally soaked up the clean air near the ocean. About 10 minutes before hand, I valet parked the car and headed inside for the interview.
The Yahoo Media Group is in a medium sized business park on Broadway & Cloverfield in Santa Monica, Google’s Los Angeles offices are quite close by as well (VT posse member H works there). I walk into the main lobby and proceed to the reception desk. The receptionist is taking phone calls. The carpeting is somewhat plush and there are couches organized in a square. There are lap tops on a table that are free for anyones usage. To the far wall a bunch of large monitors are embedded in the wall. One of them is playing “The 9″ a weekly (daily?) Yahoo Entertainment video program that was an incredibly boring and unhip attempt by Yahoo to be hip and not boring in the “tv on the internet” sector. (Note - Google hadn’t bought YouTube at this point. So the big companies was popping endless boners about trying to be the leader of video on the interweb.) The receptionist finished with her phonecalls and asked me who I was and who I was here to see. She made a quick phone call and told me to “make yourself comfortable, Amir will be down shortly.” No Odwalla. No coffee. No water or soft drinks. Google obvously has Yahoo beat in the “welcome to our company” sector as well.
Coming up next “I Played Yahtzee With Yahoo (Part 2 - It’s a Yahoo! BBQoo!)”