Yesterday was my last day at Yahoo!, and at Yahoo! Answers. It was the usual last day at work with the cube cleaning, deleting personal files from the harddrive, a farewell lunch, bequeathing accumulated swag and memorabila to colleagues and a happy hour with silly balloon hats. This morning when I woke up and saw the little cardboard box that contained 2 years worth of crap that had accumulated on my desk, I was struck by how small that box was, and how the contents of that little box did not even begin to tell the stories of the last 2 years of my life – the smiles of co-workers, the bitter political in-fighting, the disappointments and drunken hilarity. And then I thought of a short story that I read in college about the man who remembered everything in real time, and so could not live his life (he kept on remembering his past….). Then I thought, hmmm, what about a video memory of your life in YouTube?
So what’s next?
Some advice from a fellow Yahoo! veteran (I left in May this year):
- You so need to take your big gulp Yahoo! water bottle with you. It takes a while to fill up so is a great excuse for getting gossip whilst at the water cooler in a new company
- Grab a timbuk2 laptop bag from the Yahoo! shop in building D of the Sunnyvale campus, they are the one thing worth having in there
Your “about” page still lists you working @ Yahoo. Maybe it’s time to cut the cord and update it?