Two weeks ago it can be easily explained; I was at the SXSW Interactive Festival in Austin, Texas. And while that in itself could be a separate post, last Friday was also my last day at Yahoo!. Yes, again.

Which is why I’ve been pretty quiet, I guess – the first time around, I made these giant waves about leaving Yahoo! to go to start a new life in Canada, blogging as if I was riding off with some mountee into a ridiculous maple-leaf colored sunset. When that didn’t work and I was back in the Bay Area, I decided to move to San Francisco and try to have a low profile, working for Yahoo! Brickhouse. Except for the fact that Brickhouse isn’t exactly low-key. So, now I’m leaving Yahoo! again and I kinda feel like the boy who cries wolf, except replace the word “cries” with “quits” and replace “wolf” with “giant Internet conglomerate.” (For those that care about the status of BravoNation, Gordon, who left the same day as I did, wrote a blog post on the matter.)

As for my opinions of Yahoo? I still have a lot of friends there, people that are still passionate about what they do from day to day stuff. They are good folks, and I’m going to miss them terribly. But morale is low, and as for all the corporate stuff and the possible Microsoft merge, well, no comment.

That’s all I’ll say about that. I’m moving on.

My new position will be as a Developer Advocate at Ning, a social software platform company based in Palo Alto – it’s kind of a hybrid role between web development and community management and support. I’m not going to jinx it so I’ll simply say this: the stuff I want to do seems to be right up my alley, the company looks to be in a good place right now, and I’m looking forward to the opportunity. The commute, not so much – I don’t think I’ve been at the office at 9:00am in a couple of years, no exaggeration – but I’ll get used to that.

[Giant e-mail forward regarding Hilary Clinton's campaign edited out for brevity.]

From: Rufus, Yahoo! LGBT Moderator [xxx@yahoo-inc.com]
To: Yahoo! LGBT Stakeholders Group [xxx@yahoo-inc.com]
Time: 1:00pm

In the interests of keeping this Group as friendly and non-combative as possible, I would like to discourage the discussion of the political campaign and the candidates. Just think of it as a first date and avoid topics around politics, religion, and kids.

Thanks,
- Rufus

Ps. I'm just joking about the kids. We're a family friendly group and what better to cheer up a day than by sending out a cute kid photo.

From: Ernie [xxx@yahoo-inc.com]
To: Yahoo! LGBT Stakeholders Group [xxx@yahoo-inc.com]
Time: 1:11pm

... Unless your kid is Republican. Or Catholic.

(The cellphone rings.)

Ernie: Hello?
Ernie’s Mom: SEE!? I TOLD YOU YOU SHOULD HAVE STICKED TO THE BUTTERFLIES!

(Cut to Mom high-fiving Steve Ballmer, turning to the camera and both giving the thumbs-up sign. Cue laugh track, fade to black.)

Kinda cool, huh? Kind of like that scene from Jurassic Park where that eight year old girl says she knows Unix. (And if anyone wants an invitation, let me know still.)

As far as the possible news about layoffs? I’ll deal with it when I get there. I’ve dealt with it before.

(I’ll make this post short and sweet, as I accidentally lost my previous blog entry. And honestly, I’m getting tired of seeing embedded videos of myself.)

But yes, I can now officially talk about BravoNation – the project a group of us been working on in the past couple of months and one of the main reasons why I returned to Yahoo! after a four month stint working in Canada. The product is currently in a closed public beta, meaning we’re currently offering invitations for people to check out the system and give constructive feedback. (And yes, if you want an invite, go ahead and contact me – I’ll see what I can do.)

What is BravoNation, you ask? BravoNation is an achievements community website and API platform. Andy Baio has written up a pretty in-depth overview of the system, and Gordon talks about it a little bit on Yahoo! Next* as well, so you can read all about it there. For those of you that aren’t so much techies as you are gamers, think “Xbox Live Achievements, but for community websites.” (For those of you that aren’t gamers, think “the bastard child you get when you cross a thank you e-card with Magic: The Gathering,” or something like that.) If it sounds like there’s a lot of gaming elements in the product, it’s because there is – most of the team are huge gamers, and we adopted a lot of gaming principles into the application. It’ll be interesting to see what crosses over well and what doesn’t. It’ll also be interesting how the product – and our roles – will change and evolve over the next couple of months. And by “interesting,” I mean a mix between “exciting” and “petrifying.”

For those that couldn’t give a shit about BravoNation, I offer this personal moment: everyone on the team sits together. We also just happen to all be Asian American. And because we’re politically correct like that, we called ourselves “Chinatown.” Gordon even brought moon cakes once for the Lunar Festival! Seriously, you should see us do a dramatic recreation of San Francisco’s Chinese New Year’s Parade – it’s good times.

(Somewhere in Sunnyvale, someone at the Yahoo! Human Resources Department just buried her face in her hands and started sobbing.)

But in the meantime, yay us. I’m going to bed.

A couple of months ago, I had written a blog post where I had announced I was leaving Yahoo! to pursue an opportunity in Vancouver. Maybe if this website wasn’t so public I would go into some of the details; instead, I’ll simply say that lessons were learned, photos of myself sitting alone in restaurants were taken. Once it became obvious that I wouldn’t be moving to Vancouver any time soon, there was a lot of moments working from Internet cafes and watching television at home. (Did you know Bob Barker isn’t on The Price is Right anymore? Or that Rosie O’Donnell was once on The View? I KNOW!)

When it was time for me to start looking for jobs, applying to Yahoo! again wasn’t even remotely on the radar – besides, who leaves a company only to come back to it, right? – until Kevin told me about an opportunity at Yahoo! Brickhouse, Yahoo!’s experimental start-up incubator in San Francisco. When he told me about the project, the types of things I would be doing, as well as some of the fantastic people involved – people I respect professionally as well as am friends with in real life – well, I had to at least see what kind of trouble I could get myself into. (I’m under NDA so I can’t really say much besides that. If anyone really gives me a hard time, I’ll just say I work on Gay Pipes or something.) This job is also giving me an opportunity to move out of Fremont and to the Mission, but that’s for another blog post.

So we’ll see.

By the way – just so we can get it out of our system now: I’m a Brick… Hooouuuse. Yes, I’m might-tay might-tay, just lettin’ it all hang out, yes yes. I know. It’s the name of a popular song in the 70′s. I get it.

Leaving a company like Yahoo! after three and a half years of working here is never easy; I’ve made, literally, hundreds of friends; brilliant and talented Yahoo! employees and the passionate people I have interacted with through Yahoo! 360. So why am I leaving? All the drama Yahoo!’s had in the news? More money? Peanut Butter?

Actually, it’s the combination of a lot of things. But the kicker? Personal growth. No, seriously.

About two years ago, I wrote this on my blog regarding my work on the yet-to-be-released Yahoo! 360:

Regarding [Yahoo! 360], there’s a light at the end of the tunnel, and even if this project falls on its face and fails miserably (which I hope it doesn’t do, of course) I think I’ve realized that I can be passionate about something that doesn’t involve pop culture or making fun of episodes of Entertainment Tonight. And it might be naive of me, but I’m hoping something good does come out of this in one way or another – whether it’s directly from the project I’m working on or what I’ve learned about myself from it. I’m paying my dues, so to speak.

According to an article by the New York Times, the public is to believe that Yahoo! 360 did, indeed, fall on its face, which I have a response to, but won’t post here. None the less, I’ve learned a LOT being on 360: about community, about programming, about myself.

But here’s the deal: I’ve lived in the Bay Area my entire life. I grew up near Berkeley, went to college an hour from there, and because the industry that I work in just happens to be in the Bay Area, I lived here too. My parents helped me buy a condo ten minutes from their house, and in 10-20 years, it’s expected that I will be taking care of them. My life can very easily be laid out in front of me, no exaggeration, for the rest of my life.

And I don’t want that. I don’t want to be 45 and look back and say, “I sure wish I didn’t play things so safe.” I’m young and I’m not tied down in a serious relationship right now, for better or for worse. “Safe” is the last thing I really want to be doing. So I’m going to take a huge risk, go for it, and if things don’t happen the way I expect it to, personally and/or professionally… well, I’ll figure it out from there.

Until then, I’ll see you on the flip side. Wish me luck.