Y! Engineering is good, but…
Tony Tam posted about Loving Y!. Tony works on the News team, and has been impressed with Yahoo since 1997. I was even more impressed with Y! after interviewing here, because I realized just how few engineers were behind some of the properties, like News. I was amazed. Now that I’ve been at Y for just over a year, I still think it’s a great place to work, but I definitely realize it’s not all type-A strivers cranking useful apps day in, day out.
I’m not a complete subscriber to the “controlled chaos” of Yahoo lore, but I wouldn’t mind if everyone did worry a little more about their reputation as an engineer (notice I didn’t say “coder” or “hacker”), as Tony mentions happened in the old days. There’s the whole gamut from pretty poor, to amazing here, which is doubtless going to be the case when there’s just SO MANY technical folks. I just find myself wishing everyone felt the pain of struggling a little more. I have a young kid, and so true, I don’t want to work 80 hours/week, but I want to work a smart, effective week. I want to really feel I’m producing at least 2X my salary in incremental revenue to Yahoo from when I started. I want to know everyone else shares that desire, too. Funnily enough, it might be just a per-individual trait. Some folks who have been here a long time and certainly don’t need the money, still burn with a passion to make things great, and achieve beyond what is expected. Others think it’s just a job and act accordingly.
I’m going to make it part of my personal challenge to inspire my (new) team to raise the bar… my biggest concern right now though is that there isn’t enough of my team to do anything but deal with the fires burning…
