yumio.net Blog » Working in the Valley

Silicon Valley Interview Pet Peeves

Administrator — Thu, 11 Sep 2008 13:49:06 +0000

After spending several years constantly hiring people in the Valley, here are small pet peeves that I encounter frequently - and bother me most. Last week one candidate did the hat trick and did all 3 which made me want to write it down and make it “public” for the record –

1. Don’t show up late, and then not apologize.

Call me old-fashioned, but I like candidates that show up on time. But stuff happens. Traffic happens. Trains don’t run on time like they do in Germany. But is it really that much to ask to apologize when you’re late to an interview? Or at least call ahead to warn that you’d be late?

“Punctuality is the courtesy of kings” – quote I remember from the wonderful BOOK not the movie ”Thank You for Smoking” but supposedly its from a Louis XVIII. Its not that 2 minutes here, 5 minutes makes a world of difference in terms of time – its a matter of respect for the other person – and this is important no matter what the role (except maybe – brilliant engineer).

2. Don’t admit you had a long weekend in Vegas, so you didn’t really have time to prep for the interview.
Again, this is more about respect for the other person. In what world is this an appropriate response to your lack of preparation? At the very least, you should try to appear prepared – because yes, at some point in your career, you will have a long weekend in Vegas and won’t be prepared for the important presentation. But the ability to get through those situations passably – is what separates the boys/girls from the men/women.

3. Don’t be negative about the interviewer’s T-shirt.

Negativity is fine for soul-searching blogs and Yelp reviews. And sure, you can joke about people’s dress after you’ve landed your job. But being negative about the company, about industry events, about the T-shirt that the interviewer is wearing – all things which should follow the maxim “If you can’t say something nice, better not say anything at all.” You can think all these things – but do you really have to say them out loud?

All of these things come down to “RESPECT”. If you have a modicum of respect for someone who is spending the time to consider hiring you and giving you money & a sense of belonging, I think its all common sense….

Otherwise – its much more respectful to cancel an interview, than to go thru with it. In the Web world, you may not want/or care about the job now, but in 2 years this same person may be interviewing you for the dream job, and negative impressions will last a lifetime….

I have a new job!

Administrator — Thu, 11 Sep 2008 12:50:41 +0000

I have a new job! Recently I became the VP of Product for FixYa, the world’s largest community Q&A site for technical support on everything you own. FixYa maybe the largest site in the world that no one knows about. We get over 9 million visitors a month, which is equivalent or more than much-better known Yelp. Thousands of difficult product support issues get answered every day, and its absolutely free. Its like my old gig – Yahoo! Answers, except that the quality of Q&A is focused on product issues, and so there is much less chitchat, and because of its focus, its much easier to monetize.

FixYa is headquarted in the Peninsula of the Bay Area – in San Mateo. We are hiring at every position – product manager, business development, designer, and marketing. So forward this on to anyone that might be looking.

Profile Pic Management

Administrator — Fri, 02 May 2008 09:55:57 +0000

Since there is practically a site related to every aspect of Social Networking – why isn’t there one for profile pic management (or maybe Flickr should do a feature). I don’t particularly go out of my way to join social media sites, but even so I have more than 10 profile pics that I have had to upload separately. Now, you really expect me to go to each & every site and upload new pics, every time I have a makeover (or trying to play down my crazy Tequilla past?) No – there should be some kid at Stanford who starts a profile pic mgmt site or Flickr should allow me to do this. Maybe I should write Kakul…

What is up with eBay employees?

Administrator — Wed, 23 Apr 2008 06:20:03 +0000

Every time I post on Craigslist for a part-time position for Web work (coding, design, etc.) I get a ton of replies from CURRENT eBay employees who all say they can work up to 20 hours a week on moonlighting freelance. One person we hired for a facebook application was absolutely horrendous – but I still am amazed at how he often came to our office in the middle of the work-day (long lunch???) to do milestone meetings. Is life at eBay that slow & boring that you have to look for outside work? Or do they not pay enough? Inquiring minds want to know….

Is Yahoo! going to buy Twitter?

Administrator — Wed, 02 Apr 2008 19:26:51 +0000

Given that Y! will probably soon be part of Microsoft, it may not be such a good tip any more, but I noticed that in the last 30 days, I have been getting an inordinate amount of people from my former company (Yahoo!) signing up for Twitter and telling me that they are “following me”.

This happened 3 times before in the last 2 years - where I saw a big surge in people from my Yahoo! network asking me to join their “network” – and especially people you would not have expected to be interested in social networks - once for Flickr, then for del.icio.us and finally for Facebook. First 2 were bought by Yahoo!, and a billion dollar offer was made for the last one.

Is this the last gasp of Yahoo!’s bid to stay independent? Twitter????? (next may be justin.tv.

South by Southwest 2007 Interactive

Administrator — Mon, 12 Mar 2007 00:23:06 +0000

I came to South by Southwest 2007/Interactive, not knowing what to expect. The only information I had was that there were good parties at night. So I was pleasantly surprised when I can honestly say that I learned a thing or two about web design, as well as the story behind Lonelygirl15 from its creators, Miles Beckett, Greg Goodfried, and Mesh Flinders (med-school drop out, lawyer, and film director wannabe) and how Genghis Khan obliterated the Russian knights in the 13th century (“The Ten Ways to Run a Startup like Genghis Khan“) from an Asian American dude named “Kevin Hale“.

All in all, the people were normal folks (as normal as Web designers from the Bay Area can be considered normal), not snooty NYC design types, and mostly very friendly. I heard the attendance numbers were 5000+ (up 60% from last year) so that may have something to do with the normalization of the attendees. Maybe not as edgy as it once was, and certainly not as entertaining as its Film and Music cousins, but it was certainly a worthwhile professional conference.

Good times…

Usability Testing Today

Administrator — Mon, 13 Nov 2006 23:48:27 +0000

We’re in 2 day usability testing for http://www.mythings.com. We’re finding out a lot about what works and doesn’t work with our site. We’re using a 3rd party tester called www.testkitchens.com What’s really been great about working with Test Kitchens is the quality of their test subject recruits. They personally phone interview recruits for “how articulate they are about their opinions/ideas” before putting them in the pool, and they’ve done a great job of finding recruits from our target demo/psychographic profiles. I’ve been in many usability testing with Yahoo!, but so far, the quality of results we’re getting from Test Kitchens is way better than what we’ve ever gotten at Yahoo!.

First day at MyThings (Israel)

Administrator — Mon, 23 Oct 2006 08:15:07 +0000

Last time I changed jobs (from Plumtree to Yahoo!), I swore I would take at least a week off between jobs. So what do I do this time? I quit my old job at Yahoo! Answers on Friday, and I started my new job on Saturday. On Saturday, I jumped on a plane to Tel Aviv, Israel, where the development team resides. And here I am now, first time in the Middle East. The new gig, MyThings, is hopefully going to be a blend of e-commerce and social networking. At least it uses all the Web 2.0 buzzwords. Now I have to help make it become reality. With the development team in Israel, the sales team in London, and the Marketing & Product Mgmt team in Palo Alto, it will be a real challenge to manage the geographic divide, but the opportunity in this space make it all worthwhile. Or at least lets hope so…..

Yumio

Last Day at Yahoo!

Administrator — Sat, 21 Oct 2006 13:35:20 +0000

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?

Caterina’s Golden Rules of blog writing

Administrator — Thu, 19 Oct 2006 09:42:10 +0000

which I haven’t been following at all. Caterina of Flickr fame told me, before she became Newsweek-cover famous, these golden rules:

1) Write short entries (all my entries are 500 words or more)

2) Blog often (I have 3-6 month gaps)

3) Suckup to popular bloggers and beg for their links

Anyway – maybe I’ll try that now. So here goes – Caterina is doing something really interesting on her blog http://www.caterina.net/archive/001008.html Its the six-word story mentioned by Hemingway – “For sale: baby shoes, never used.” Lots of people are contributing…. (can you find mine?)