Dave Viner's Weblog

Life after Yahoo

After nearly 6 years working at Yahoo, I decided to resign. I'm sure your first question is: WHY?

No, it wasn't because of the people. In fact, I love the people I worked with. And, no, it wasn't because of the projects that I was working on. I like the stuff I was doing, and the people on my team, and the challenges we faced. And no, it wasn't because I wanted more money. And, no, I wasn't fired nor did I leave in disgrace. In fact, I would highly recommend Yahoo as an employer to anyone who is interested. The people are fantastic, smart, and motivated (at least the overwhelming majority are motivated). The work is challenging and interesting. The benefits are superb.

So why did I resign?

Mostly because of my new daughter. At 5 months old, she's the coolest thing since sliced bread for me. And I couldn't bear the thought that I might miss her first crawl, first word, first _fill_in_any_other_thing_ because I had to attend some meeting about a project which, while interesting, was a hundred billion times less cool than my daughter. And, let's be honest, we can all find more meetings with more bug reports, launch checklists, PRD reviews, etc. I can not relive my daughter's first words. It would really crush me if I missed any of her major milestones for work.

Of course, this decision does leave me in a bit of a weird position. Neither Diana nor I work, but we have a 5 month old daughter and a mortgage payment. Not exactly the financial analyst's dream. But we have enough to do this for quite a while (thanks to Diana's spectacular ability at saving and budgeting).

Your next question is probably: What the hell are you doing now? Well, my last day at Yahoo! was 7 April. Since then, I've slept more, read more, actually done all my work for business school, and started on the enormous home project list. No, it's nothing really huge or dramatic, but I feel really good about it. I gave myself 2 full weeks of not thinking about work or work-related things. So for now, I'm just enjoying myself and my free time.

In the past week and a half, I've spent more time rolling around on the floor with my daughter than I ever have... and it's been everything and more than I dreamt. It's hard to describe if you haven't had a kid, and if you have, then you know exactly what I'm talking about.

Anyways, I plan to blog a heck of a lot more often now that my schedule is truly flexible. I can't promise it will all be good, but I'll try :)

And, of course, if you have a good idea for a new business or want to play 18 holes on a random Thursday morning, let me know :D

Posted by dave at April 18, 2006 11:38 PM | TrackBack