November 2008 Archives

I'm quite surprised at how busy things seem even though I'm now officially unemployed. Thursday was spent deciphering the industrial relations and tax arrangements, and catching up with various folks.

Halloween Hack Day

Friday I went back to the office to pickup my stuff. After almost 8 years I had a literal car boot full of stuff on my desk, crammed into drawers and on the *two* returns I needed to display all my toys. :D Played a game of soccer up at KGV as we had entered a lunchtime indoor soccer tourney there prior, and then spent the afternoon distracting folks from Hack Day.

The weekend was the same as any weekend. I had to go to Ikea to buy a shelf to store all the crap that was previously at work. :) Mum & dad suggested we visit Vietnam & Malaysia since I now have some free time and dad has long service leave. The tickets are now booked and I went to the Vietnamese Consulate today to get my tourist visa.

Monday saw me back in the office to hand in the various redundancy forms & legalese, a few goodbyes then it was up to the pub and dinner with my fellow unemployed bums. :)

This morning I went into Donington, the start of a series of sessions paid for by Yahoo! aimed to help staff transition to whatever they choose to do in future. Its pretty cool - using a few strength/weakness like/dislike exercises they try to help you clarify what you might like to do next but they don't actually find a job for you. I think this separation is good, avoiding potential conflicts of interest and it allows for a lot of flexibility in terms of folks wanting to do their own thing etc.

Sydney Harbour Bridge

After that I popped into Paxtons as I needed a passport photo for the tourist visa mentioned earlier. Paxtons do passport photos for $15 with a one hour turnaround. I couldn't understand why it cost so much, nor the slow turnaround, so I pulled out my digital camera (which is always in my backpack), took a photo of myself in front of their handy white screen, and used the Kodak kiosk to create my own "mini-prints". I printed 9 passport sized photos for $1.50 (the minimum cost for a "mini-print", printed instantly), and it took all of 15 minutes. For whatever reason the "proper" way of printing takes an hour but doing it myself with the kiosk allows instant printing. I did call the Consulate to check if this was ok and I highly recommend this method if its suitable for your needs (passport photo requirements can be notoriously picky so beware).

Last Wednesday I was notified that my position at Yahoo!7 was being made redundant, effective immediately. It was quite a shock as I had just started a new project which was exciting and was looking forward to a hectic final 2 months of the calendar year. I was expecting to finish the year on a high as this project would have resolved an issue which had been bugging Y!7 for a number of years.

Although a complete shock I have to say I haven't felt too sad about it. There were certainly some aspects of the company that I found incredibly frustrating - I won't go into details suffice to say that its your typical big company stuff. I get the feeling that some folks are surprised that I'm not more bitter about what happened and I think its worth explaining that I worked pretty hard over the 7 years, 9 months and 3 weeks to help build the company to what it is today. It would be simply childish to "undo" all that effort by rubbishing the company over a simple parting of ways. I obviously still have many friends at Yahoo! and I think I will forever be a yahoo at heart so I wish everyone the best. :)

Sunrise @ Freshie

In fact, one of the most pleasant things about the past few days has been the overwhelming support extended to me by yahoos all over the world. I can't thank everyone enough for the general well wishes through to the offers to provide recommendations to, and contacts in other organisations as well as other parts of Yahoo! :D

Yahoo! was my first "real" job which I started before I finished Uni. It caused my 3 year undergrad degree to be dragged out over 7 years. :) I was digging through various Yahoo! paperwork earlier tonight and came across my original offer letter and even reading it today it still gives me a little buzz as I remember how excited I was to receive it all the way back in October 2000. I am really proud to have been a yahoo.

I'd describe my mood as hesitantly excited right now. Opportunities abound but for now I'm going to take a few weeks/months off to toy with some ideas I've had for a while and generally reflect on what I might do next. And yeah, I'll be surfing. :)