Monday Morning

Talk about an interesting morning! So as some of you might have guessed, people in South Africa drive on the left side of the road (being a former British Colony and all). This was hard enough when I was in Cambridge, and I only had to look the opposite direction when crossing a street. Now I actually have to drive on the ‘wrong’ side of the road! :-) So I keep thinking to myself: left, left, left, on right turns stay left. When I come to my first turn, which happens to be a right turn, I naturally look to my left to make sure there are no cars coming. I make sure to pinpoint exactly where I am going to go—left of the median—and start to approach when (can anyone guess what I forgot to do?) a car on the right of me drives by. So I hit the brakes, swear profusely at myself for trying to set a world record in “Least Amount of Time an American Has Taken to Get Into an Accident Driving on the Left-hand Side of the Road” (I literally had been in the car 2 seconds), and continue on my way.

Cyest (the startup I am working for) is located a couple miles away from where I am staying, and is literally only 3 turns from my apartment, so of course I somehow manage to get lost. Which normally wouldn’t be a problem, because I would just: a) stop the car, and b) use google maps to figure out how to get to where I’m going. I don’t have google maps here in South Africa (I don’t even have a phone number yet), but I do have a map, so it should be simple, right? Well, not exactly. Crime prevention hasn’t been a real priority here in Johannesburg (or if it has it hasn’t been very effective), and the first thing I was given to read when I arrived was a manual on how NOT to have your car hijacked. Number one way to prevent being hijacked: you guessed it—don’t stop your car on the side of the road and pull out a map to figure out where you are going (you might as well trade someone directions for your car keys). So is this suburban white boy being a little paranoid? Maybe, but if you read this manual, and then heard that only 1 out of the last 3 GSB people to stay in Johannesburg has had their car broken into while they were in it, then you might feel the same way. So I drive around, and luckily find the main road that I am looking for, and manage to get to Cyest.

And I haven’t even started work yet :-)

First day in South Africa

Well, after 24 hours of traveling from San Francisco to DC to Johannesburg, I have finally arrived in South Africa! The flight over here was actually pretty uneventful; I read Freakonomics on the flight to DC (I had already heard a lot of the stories from the book but figured i should read the whole thing). Upon arriving in DC i discovered that i was assigned a center seat even though i reserved an aisle--this didn't make me too happy but luckily the flight was not full so i found an aisle seat with nobody next to me. I'm not great at sleeping on planes, but i managed to get a couple hours of sleep in between watching Shrek 3, 300, Blades of Glory (which had its moments, but wasn't great--I had a very similar response to Ricky Bobby as well).
Upon arriving in South Africa, the cabbie that picked me up had no idea where we were going, so I got a free one hour unplanned tour of Johannesburg while he kept asking me where it was (I don't he understood that i had no idea, just an email with the address). But eventually we got here--its a pretty nice complex, though the guy with a rifle outside of one of the entrances wasn't exactly reassuring. Tomorrow I'm off to my first day, and I'm sure I'll have more to write about then.

Advertising: The Future of Yahoo!

I met with Chris Jaffe today, who runs the Advertising User Experience Division here at Yahoo!. We talked about where he thinks the best opportunities are at Y!, and where the future of Y! lies. Not surprisingly, he believes that advertising is the place to be, and admits that in the past Y! placed it's B level engineers in advertising (with A level in product development). Now he is seeing this trend reverse as Yahoo! enters its "teenage years." In his meetings with Sue Decker, they have both agreed that the future of Y! is moving away from its owned content (yahoo.com) and into advertising partnerships with content owners (Ford, P&G, NBC).

One area that he believes Google is much farther behind than Y! is in TV advertising--currently advertisers on TV barely know what demographic is watching their ad, and in the near future Yahoo! will be providing data that is just as detailed as what is available for online ads.

Chris also discussed the area where he believes Google is still killing Yahoo!: scalability. All of the advertising tools at Google are automated--they just need to feed the "Adwords fire" and the auctions will take care of themselves. Y! still has a large salesforce, and in his opinion 3/4 of these people are un-needed (saving only the people who deal with Fortune 50 companies). Hopefully I will be able to discuss this in more detail with Robi Ganguly, who is also on my team and working in the division focused on improving scalability.

I believe that Chris truly agrees with the vision of Sue and Jerry here (he said that he has turned down multiple offers in the last 8 months), but he is concerned that they may not be able to deliver in time. In his opinion, if APEX hasn't launched in 18 months and blown away the competition, then Yahoo! is toast. And looking at Panama, this is a legitimate concern.

As for me, he believes that right now is the time to start a company or move into technology--the internet space is established but still moving very quickly, and there are very smart people who have figured out how to be successful (he mentioned Meebo as a great example). He also believes that you can move into consulting at any point in time, and that the experience you get working in the Valley will make you a more intriguing candidate for any job.

Google Q2 Revenue Down

Shares have dropped 8% in after hour trading.

I can hear people celebrating around my cube :)

Yahoo! Q2 Results

Today we had an all-hands meeting at Yahoo! to discuss the Q2 results and what is in Yahoo's future. Jerry Yang focused on how to change Y! three years down the road. His vision of Y! is a deep, active marketplace of consumers, advertisers, and publishers/developers. The opportunity exists in turning data into insights, which can then be turned into revenue generation. The problem is that Y! has become too separate from the Web. One change that he would like to make is rid Y! of its "closed garden" mentality--allow users to access content that is not on the Y! network. Additionally, he would like to change the company's focus away from deals with advertisers and content providers, to becoming partnerships. He has given himself 100 days to buy alignment with leadership, and evolve the organizational structure.

So, what do I think is wrong with Yahoo!?
-Decisions take too long to move through the organization--Y! needs a flatter hierarchy
-Culture is "9-6 job"; people are not enthusiastic about working here--changing this needs to start at the top
-People are protective of their turf within Y!, but do not necessarily make decisions that are in the best interest of the entire company

This last point is best illustrated through an example I heard yesterday. Someone within the division I work in (SDS) found out that a group of 100+ engineers were being laid off due to downsizing at their company. SDS moved in to interview as many candidates as possible, and was interested in many of them to hire. Realizing that other divisions at Yahoo! might also be interested, SDS told them about the opportunity as well. Now these divisions are angry at SDS because they were not informed earlier, and SDS has gotten the "pick of the litter." My guess is that in the future, if another opportunity like this ever occurs, there will be no communication between divisions for fear of being ostracized. Not a great thing when Yahoo! is trying to focus on "hiring the brightest people and placing them in areas where they will add the most value," as Jerry Yang mentioned in the all-hands meeting this morning.

Meeting with Bradley Horowitz

On Friday, I had a meeting with Bradley Horowitz, Head of Advanced Development Division at Yahoo!. Bradley had given a talk for the Executive Speaker Series the first week of my internship, and I was very interested in his role as 'innovation leader' at Yahoo!. We discussed the difficulties of maintaining an entrepreneurial culture at a company the size of Y!, which are exacerbated by how quickly Y! has grown. One major problem that I have seen is that Y! has no platform--there are very little best practices across the network, and products/business units are still verticalized with little communication. Bradley mentioned that fixing this problem is one of Jerry Yang's priorities, and that very soon he will implementing a major change to address this problem.
I also asked Bradley how a company like Y! can keep its best employees; what stops them from leaving for startups or starting their own companies. Bradley runs Brickhouse, which addresses this problem, but he agreed that there is nothing Y! can do (or should do) if an employee has a great idea and wishes to pursue it outside of Y!. However, if the employee chooses to pursue his/her idea within Y!, than instead of a 1:1000 chance of success, it will be more like 1:100 or 1:50. So basically it comes down to people's risk tolerances--starting your company at Y! will never make you a billionaire, but it can make you a millionaire.

Human Tetris

Check out this new Japanese game show where humans act like tetris pieces. Perhaps a new Wii game?