Chan's Personal Blog - Work

Thinking About Joining The MI-6?

nospam@example.com (CHaN) — Fri, 09 Oct 2009 00:38:12 -0700

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.

Yahoo! Kicks Off Ad Campaign

nospam@example.com (CHaN) — Wed, 07 Oct 2009 22:38:31 -0700

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.

Yahoo!'s new "Anthem" ad @ Yahoo! Video

Geek speak for what went into our new homepage @ Yahoo! Video

And yes, they kept the yodel.

The All New Yahoo! Search

nospam@example.com (CHaN) — Mon, 28 Sep 2009 23:59:56 -0700

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.

Yahoo Microsoft Search Deal

nospam@example.com (CHaN) — Sun, 02 Aug 2009 23:59:00 -0700

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.

Yahoo! Search Pad Launched

nospam@example.com (CHaN) — Tue, 07 Jul 2009 23:11:34 -0700

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.

The Move To Yahoo! HQ

nospam@example.com (CHaN) — Wed, 24 Jun 2009 22:59:16 -0700

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.

Operation Pink Thunder

nospam@example.com (CHaN) — Thu, 18 Jun 2009 22:08:05 -0700

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.

The Psychology of Incompetence

nospam@example.com (CHaN) — Fri, 22 May 2009 00:41:42 -0700

I got this awesome video from ptr entitled, "The Psychology of Incompetence", by Ron Burk. The speaker tries to tackle why software is so buggy and awful, and it basically boils down to incompetent leadership and incompetent programmers. The talk is pretty amusing and funny.

It was quite refreshing to watch this as I have seen some pretty epic fails as of late in the software world.

Google Searches For Employees Most Likely To Quit

nospam@example.com (CHaN) — Wed, 20 May 2009 08:35:00 -0700

I came across this article entitled, "Google Searches for Staffing Answers," from the Wall Street Journal. It's about how Google is crunching its internal human resources data to try to identify employees that are most likely to quit. The goal is to identify them early and attempt to retain talent in an effort to head off a brain drain at Google.

Concerned a brain drain could hurt its long-term ability to compete, Google Inc. is tackling the problem with its typical tool: an algorithm.

The Internet search giant recently began crunching data from employee reviews and promotion and pay histories in a mathematical formula Google says can identify which of its 20,000 employees are most likely to quit.

Google officials are reluctant to share details of the formula, which is still being tested. The inputs include information from surveys and peer reviews, and Google says the algorithm already has identified employees who felt underused, a key complaint among those who contemplate leaving.

The move is one of a series Google has made to prevent its most promising engineers, designers and sales executives from leaving at a time when its once-powerful draws -- a start-up atmosphere and soaring stock price -- have been diluted by its growing size. The data crunching supplements more traditional measures like employee training and leadership meetings to evaluate talent.

Google's algorithm helps the company "get inside people's heads even before they know they might leave," said Laszlo Bock, who runs human resources for the company.

There's a number of options available to try to retain talent: more pay, showering employees with stock, putting people into more interesting projects, etc. What would be very amusing though is if someone figured out what the algorithm that's used which would flag you as an employee likely to leave. One could game the system to have the company shower you with riches and projects.

Reducing Number of Meetings

nospam@example.com (CHaN) — Thu, 26 Mar 2009 22:18:54 -0700

One of the things I absolutely despise at work are meetings. If I seem grumpy in a particular week, it's probably because I had 20+ hours worth of meetings that week, and I feel very unproductive. As a programmer, I subconsciously measure the amount of work I do, by the numbers of line of code that I write; days when I'm stuck in meetings all day, I contribute zero lines of code.

There's several reasons why I hate meetings. One is that it fragments my time. In order for me to really get into the groove of programming, I need a large contiguous block of time to get in the zone. If I have a meeting at 1:30-2:30pm, and then another one at 3:00-3:30pm, that half hour gap in between the meetings is useless because I can't use that time to program. Another scenario is, meetings where I'm invited to them, but I have absolutely no reason to be there, and it's a complete waste of my time. The last type of meeting I hate are the ones that take 30 minutes, but it could have easily been resolved by a couple of e-mails. These meetings are an incredible inefficient use of time.

The straw that broke the camel's back was last week when I was invited to join an 8am meeting. For those that know me well, I am not a morning person at all. In that entire meeting, I literally said two things, "hi, I'm on the call", and "bye." A day later, I was on a conference call where all these people needed answers, but they didn't invite the right people onto the call, so it was a waste of everyone's time.

All this has changed when I read a message that my division manager wrote in an internal mailing list. He will reject meeting invitations if:

The meeting has no agenda.
The meeting organizer has no convincing reason why his presence is required.

These two criteria are simple, yet powerful. I applied these rules today, and rejected two meetings. It felt very liberating to do so. What was the net effect? After those two meetings I was supposed to go to, someone posted the meeting minutes, and I spent a couple minutes reading through them. One of the meetings, they talked about stuff that I didn't need to know, and I wouldn't have had anything intelligent to say. The second meeting was a complete waste of time because no one had done their homework in advance of the call, so yet another huge waste of time. This little trick freed up two hours in my day to work on stuff that I should actually be working on.

So, hats off to my divisional manager for enlightening me. If anyone complains about it, I'll just say I'm emulating the powers above that govern me.

One Shots: There Be Bears

nospam@example.com (CHaN) — Tue, 03 Mar 2009 11:37:59 -0800

Quick post today because I realize I've been neglecting my blog. I came across this awesome photo of polar bears roaming around in Trondheim at the Yahoo! Norway offices.

The Illusion Of Competence

nospam@example.com (CHaN) — Wed, 18 Feb 2009 22:06:11 -0800

I came across this amusing article in Time Magazine entitled, "Competence: Is Your Boss Faking It?"

Bosses may be an overbearing breed, but more often than not, you've got to admire their business chops. Wouldn't you love to have that same sense of competence and confidence, that ability to assess tough problems and reach smart solutions on the fly? Guess what? So would they. If you have ever suspected that your boss isn't actually good enough at what he or she does to deserve the job in the first place, a new study published in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology suggests that you might be right. [...]

Social psychologists know that one way to be viewed as a leader in any group is simply to act like one. Speak up, speak well and offer lots of ideas, and before long, people will begin doing what you say. This works well when leaders know what they're talking about, but what if they don't? If someone acts like a boss but thinks like a boob, is that still enough to stay on top?

[Work sessions] were videotaped, and a group of independent observers performed the same evaluations, as did Anderson and Kilduff. All three sets of judges reached the same conclusions. Consistently, the group members who spoke up the most were rated the highest for such qualities as "general intelligence" and "dependable and self-disciplined." The ones who didn't speak as much tended to score higher for less desirable traits, including "conventional and uncreative." [...]

"Dominant individuals behaved in ways that made them appear competent," the researchers write, "above and beyond their actual competence." Troublingly, group members seemed only too willing to follow these underqualified bosses. An overwhelming 94% of the time, the teams used the first answer anyone shouted out often giving only perfunctory consideration to others that were offered.

Lately I've been finding myself with a front-row seat to amateur hour performances, and I cringe when people offer up random bad answers that make no sense. Seems like the more answers you give, the more competent you appear. Kind of funny though. Imagine appearing on Jeopardy and always buzzing in right away, and quickly making up an answer. You'd have a huge negative balance, but people would rate you highly competent right?

Yahoo! Search Pad Demo

nospam@example.com (CHaN) — Thu, 05 Feb 2009 23:46:16 -0800

Yesterday, Yahoo! announced a new search product that they will be testing called Search Pad. Here's an abstract from the Yahoo! Search Blog:

If youve ever used a search engine as a tool to help plan a vacation, research a purchase, or find health information on an illness, you know how difficult it is to keep track of the relevant websites and notes you find. Today, we are testing a new feature called Search Pad to help users effortlessly capture websites that they find on Yahoo! Search and organize that information to complete important tasks.

Here's a video that demonstrates the feature that they're testing.

Yahoo! Search Pad Preview @ Yahoo! Video

I have to say this feature is pretty neat, and I think it'll be another key feature that could bring Google users over to Yahoo. I think the tides of the search engine wars are starting to shift especially given the latest news that Yahoo Search's market share has stabilized. This last weekend, Google also had major problems with their search; they flagged every website as being harmful. This event actually caused a lot of people to check out Yahoo! Search again.

A good portion of my team, and the legendary Ryan Grove helped build this product. Kudos to them for successfully delivering a demo ready version of this feature. (For the record, I'm not involved in this product, other than helping with occasional testing/feedback.)

Dinner Impossible: Yahoo! Editon

nospam@example.com (CHaN) — Thu, 15 Jan 2009 23:01:43 -0800

Yesterday was the five year anniversary for Yahoo! Search. To celebrate, the Food Network came by to film an episode of Dinner Impossible with Chef Robert Irvine. Unfortunately I wasn't able to attend because I'm in Victoria, but I have plenty of information and pictures from co-workers.

As usual, I believe the chef shows up, and gets 6 hours to whip up a menu to feed a lot of hungry people. In this case, he had to feed 450+ hungry Yahoos. My divisional manager was in charge of buying food. Two of the search executives (Tuoc and Raj) got to work as sous chefs, as seen here.

The official Yahoo Corporate flickr account has a bunch of photos of the event as well.

In attendance were also the Yahoo founders, Jerry Yang and David Filo, as well as Yahoo's new CEO, Carol Bartz.

This Yahoo Edition of Dinner Impossible will be aired in March sometime, so keep your eyes peeled for it. You'll see a lot of the people that I work with, and all the awesome people that work at Yahoo Search.

I Am Not A Mercenary Coder - Part 2

nospam@example.com (CHaN) — Mon, 05 Jan 2009 21:46:23 -0800

This is a follow-up article to "I Am Not A Mercenary Coder" because there is a new chapter to the story, and no, I have not joined a mercenary outfit. If you don't want to re-read it, let me give a brief overview again. A couple months ago, one of my friends joined a shady start-up in Silicon Valley and kept pestering to me to visit him for lunch. I finally went to visit him, but the lunch turned out to be a trap, and they were trying to recruit me to their organization, and I had to sit through a sales pitch by their CEO. After that incident, relations with my friend has been chilly at best since I decried their recruiting tactics.

Fast forward a couple months, and I come across my friend again at a dinner and movie event because the party organizer is a mutual friend. We go out for dinner first before the movie, and the friend is supposed to join us for the movie. We hold seats for him until the theater becomes packed, and we're forced to surrender the seat. Looks like the guy is a no show. The organizer is visibly annoyed because he's been blowing off events like this consistently. As we're driving away from the theater, we receive a text message from the friend saying he just got here, and wanted to do dessert.

Over dessert, I discover that this guy has jumped ship to yet another start-up in less than three months; however, this time, the start-up is even smaller, and the business plan is even more unsound. Throughout the rest of the night, he pokes around asking if I'm still happy with my current job, and whether I'm being properly compensated. Obviously the guy is on a fishing trip, trying to recruit me yet again. At this point, I start providing short conversation ending responses.

After that, I thought to myself how stupid it would be to follow this guy around. If I had joined his previous start-up, he would have jumped ship, and I would be stuck either at the start-up, or I'd be following him to yet another job. It was only a couple months ago when he was ranting and raving about his previous employer. It's also not ideal that he's now super busy and constantly canceling on friends at the last minute.

I hope I never become that man.