Open mind, insert thought

Just a few weeks shy of my five-year anniversary, I did it.  I left Yahoo!  And it wasn't with an entirely happy heart that I did so.  A bit of background:

For the past five years, I led product teams at Yahoo!  In my time there, I enjoyed an amazing job and worked with some of the most dedicated and talented people I have ever met.  I was given opportunities to make tremendous changes that impacted the lives of millions on a daily basis.  Some of those changes were homeruns, some of them were massive failures.  But the changes of which I was most proud were the ones almost no one noticed -- policing and cleaning up one of the largest online communities in the world, putting pedophiles and other seriously bad people in jail when they abused our service, and protecting kids while keeping Yahoo! out of court and out of the press.  And, of course, I'm happy that I helped some righteously outspoken people be heard, worked on products so advanced they won't be available to the public for a couple years, and just generally made the Internet a more interesting, safe and fun place.  I worked on small teams and I also cultivated a team that topped out at more than 100 people worldwide, and together we built some great products.

And, then, I left.  It was clearly time to go.  I leave incredibly disappointed in both the corporate management and the board of directors, who let the opportunity with Microsoft slip away.  A deal like the one Microsoft proposed was a necessary step for Yahoo!, and its loss was the result of sheer hubris.  The arrogance I witnessed at Yahoo!, which is present in all big companies, reached a peak a couple of years ago - ironically just about the time our loss to Google was beyond question.  That fall from power as the #1 online service resulted in cross-company retrenchment as execs thought more about securing silos of power than about the good of Yahoo!.  That play-it-safe attitude led to Yahoo!'s current state, revealing what the entire investment community has now come to see -- that Yahoo!'s uppermost leadership needs a swift kick in the ass and the company needs to be bought.  With the exception of Connected Life (the last BU for which I worked), I believe that Yahoo! corporate has lost anything resembing a competitive edge.  To be fair, I applaud the work being done by several individuals across the organization, including those on the Y!OS team; however, I fear that it's too little too late.  Stepping back from the tactical, one can see that, when an upstart company like Facebook can rise up to be a worthy competitor for a storied giant like Yahoo!, it's time to start thinking about plan B.

So, I was (to my surprise) open to being poached.  And poached I was, by a tremendous opportunity.  I leave Yahoo! to head up product for a well-funded social gaming company.  As I watched the online community sector develop over the past 11 years, I came to believe that the traditionally difficult-to-monetize world of user interaction would ultimately be won in social gaming.  And Zynga is the right company at the right time to capitalize on that promise.  I'm pleased to join them as VP of Product Management, and I know that our products will evolve dramatically over the next year.

So, after five years of fighting every day to save the world (and one of the biggest global Internet brands) from itself, I ride off into the sunset.  Beyond the horizon, there are interactions and experiences that promise to be fun for everyone - just wait and see.

...and, even though I missed it by a few weeks, I was still given my five-year gumball machine.  Thanks and peace to all of the hard-working people I stood beside in those purple trenches.  It was a great experience every single day.