Work

I stumbled upon the United Kingdom's Secret Intelligence Service website, home of the MI-6. What's interesting is that in their careers section, they have two different tests to see what type of career path you may be proficient at.

First test is for the position of Operational Officers.
Second test is for the position of Administrators.

I did the test and looks like I could do either position.

I have to admit that I did browse through their careers section, and their benefits are quite something. 25 days vacation plus 10.5 days public holidays! Unfortunately you have to be a British citizen to apply, so I'm very unqualified in that area. I wonder if they take loyal subjects from the Commonwealth though.

So last week, Yahoo! kicked off its $100 million dollar ad campaign. They're running these ads on television, and all over the internet. It has been a long time since Yahoo! ran television commercials. So far the commercials can only be seen in the US. They will be hitting Canada some time next year.

Interesting side note about the first commercial below. They hired the dance choreographer from Slumdog Millionaire to do the Indian dance sequence.





And yes, they kept the yodel.

If you've noticed the complete lack of blog postings this last two weeks, it's because my life had been completely consumed by the new Yahoo! Search. I was working 12-14 hour days on it, so not a lot of time for anything else. I didn't even have time to cook or to pickup food at the grocery store, so my apartment was completely out of food.

In either case, the fruit of this labour is the new Yahoo! Search which we launched on September 21st to the United States, India, Mexico, The United Kingdom, France, and Spain. To learn more about the new features that we're offering, you can check out the Yahoo! Search tour.


The new Yahoo! Search page is also much faster. There's an excellent article over at the Yahoo! Developer Network entitled, "Not Just a Pretty Face: Performance and the New Yahoo! Search," which highlights a lot of new performance improvements we did.

The final weekend of the project was definitely epic. We had programmers, product managers, editors, and quality assurance folks from all timezones working on this. As soon as I was getting to bed, someone from the UK picked up from where I left off, and continued until the next shift. The global coordination of this project was quite remarkable.

If working through the weekend wasn't enough, on Monday we had release day, and I was in charge of launching this internationally. This launch had a lot of media coverage associated with it, so we only had one shot to launch this right. If during launch we had a problem, we would have to do whatever it took to fix it. There would be no rollbacks.

With that in mind, we prepared for deployment. Late in the afternoon, we got the final sign-offs from quality assurance, and the mission was a go. I called for battle stations and we began deploying the new search experience all around the world. Things went surprisingly smooth. Near the end of our deployment, the operations manager was wondering why there weren't any fires.

My friends laughed at me on Facebook about all the military terminology I was using, but hey, there are parallels when you're leading such a large and complex operation. (You know who you are, and I will remember this.) The lead product manager did highlight what an accomplishment this is considering that this is a multi-billion dollar product.

Some of my friends have already tried it, and the feedback has been generally positive. It does take a little getting used to the three column design, especially if you're used to Google; however, I actually really like it. I find it more readable, and more visually pleasing.

I found it remarkable that someone had posted a comment saying, "It looks exacly like Google's [user interface] with your logo. Way to seperate yourselves." Are you kidding me??

Anyways, congrats to the Yahoo! Search team for pulling off this crazy project in such a short amount of time. I am still currently sleep deprived, and still recovering from this. Time for sleep.

Well, this last week has been an emotional roller coaster at work due to the Yahoo Microsoft deal. I have to say, the night before the deal was announced, I was reading the rumours from various tech websites, and I didn't like what I was seeing. There was obviously some anxiety over how much longer I would be able to stay in Silicon Valley, and whether my job would still be here. The idea of becoming a Microsoft employee wasn't very palatable either.

Day break came, and the deal was announced super early in the morning (4:30am ish?). My immediate reaction was, oh my goodness, the stock price is sinking like a rock. I should have seen it coming though, speculators were piling into the stock, driving the price up to $17/share which wasn't sustainable. When the deal finally came, these people were piling out of the stock. It seems like investors in general didn't like the deal because Yahoo didn't get cash upfront for the deal. I have to admit that the deal is fairly complicated. The next two days, I spend several hours sitting through meetings that explained the deal, and its implications. I understand what the deal entails now, but the merits of the deal were definitely not apparent at first glance.

In either case, I was glad to hear that my job wasn't going to be transferred to Microsoft. I will continue be fighting on the side of Yahoo, and my job should be safe. My team should be unaffected by the deal, so I thank God for that.

Anyway, I'm still digesting this deal, and pondering what the future holds, and what change shall come.

The last couple months, I've been working on a product at Yahoo! called Search Pad which has finally launched today. It's a tool for people who do research using a search engine.

The product was designed to meet a need that we observed in the labs when we watched people do searches. We found that people would go to a search engine, visit a site, jot down some notes on some paper, visit another site, jot down some more, and repeat. Yahoo! Search Pad is a built in notepad in Yahoo! Search; thus, replacing that paper. It records the sites you visit, it allows you to jot down notes, and it even lets you share your notes with your friends.

The tool is also smart enough to figure out whether you're doing research. If it thinks you are, it'll start recording the sites you visit. It's also intelligent enough to detect if you've started doing research on another topic, and start recording a new session for you.

Enough talk, how do you trigger Search Pad? Check out: http://search.yahoo.com/search?p=ninjas+vs+pirates. On the right hand side of the screen is a dock that reads "Search Pad". Click on that, and Search Pad will open up.



This is an example of how I used Search Pad. So, one of my co-workers is in town this week, and I needed to pick a restaurant to go to. I was hankering for a good Philly Cheesesteak. So, I went to Yahoo! Search and ran a couple queries like "Philly Cheesesteak Santa Clara", "Philly Cheesesteak San Jose", etc. I checked out some of the restaurant's websites, and Search Pad recorded all of these sites that I visited. I copied down some important info from those websites, like hours of operation, and their reviews. I threw out some of the restaurants that I didn't think were very good. I'm left with a shortlist of good Philly Cheesesteak joints. I then share the document with my friends, so they can help pick the restaurant we want to go to.

You can check out my research on Philly Cheesesteaks here.

To all my friends who are school teachers. If your students start a lot of their research using search engines, then I would highly recommend this Search Pad tool for them. It's a really useful way to organize information while doing research on search engines.

You can read the official Search Pad announcement over at the Yahoo! Search Blog.

Anyways, it's nice that this is finally out there, and I can resume regular sleeping hours again. Please voice any comments and feedback that you may have.

Two weeks ago, my entire team was moved from Yahoo's Mission College campus to Yahoo HQ. When I tell people that, their first impression is, oh, you got a promotion and you're moving to headquarters? Nope, not at all, this is a cost cutting measure because they had free space for us. Anyway, currently settling in, but still haven't had time to unpack my stuff. I'm still getting randomly loss in my building.

I guess I'll start with the cons of moving to HQ. The commute currently is annoying via public transit; I will reiterate that public transit in Silicon Valley is bad. My commute has increased from 30-35mins one way, to 60-70mins. As a result, I have to wake up earlier, and I'm getting home later. As a consequence, I have accelerated my time table in buying a car. Just need to find time to sort out California driver's license and insurance. Unfortunately in this state, my Canadian driver's license isn't going to cut it, so I need to do the road test again.

The other thing about our move to headquarters is that our current workspace is one big open area, shared by 4 programmers. I lucked out and got my own individual cube, but the other folks weren't too happy about it. Currently they're not reconfiguring work spaces because a ton of people moved to HQ.

On to the pros of moving to HQ. One huge advantage is that the cafeterias at headquarters are much much better. The food so far has been pretty good, and they have a larger selection. First day at HQ, I had a flank steak salad for lunch. Yum.

Another advantage is that most talks, events, and training happen at HQ, so it's convenient to attend them now. While we were at the Mission College campus, it meant a 20min drive to HQ and back if we wanted to participate. Life at headquarters is definitely more lively. Today for example, they had an outdoor BBQ with some band playing for everyone.

Anyway more later. Just wanted to post a small glimpse into my life currently. The blog has been a bit neglected as of late as I'm pretty busy.

Currently crazy busy at work, but here's some photos of a prank that was inflicted on a co-worker during our move to Yahoo! HQ. I will not confirm or deny any involvement in this op. Here's a little bit of epic music to go with the Flickr slideshow.