I haven’t been to the office in the past two weeks.
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.
20 responses so far ↓
YvesPaul // Mar 21, 2008 at 2:11 pm
Good luck with your new job.
Another Yahoo // Mar 21, 2008 at 2:33 pm
Good decision. Yahoo is a bit depressing, Ning is a good choice - the commute will be worth it!
random person // Mar 21, 2008 at 3:41 pm
Yayy, I love ning!
GDad // Mar 21, 2008 at 4:53 pm
Good luck, Ernie. I hope you get into the groove pretty quickly.
lise // Mar 21, 2008 at 5:06 pm
I’m proud of you for being brave, Ernie. Good luck!
Gina // Mar 21, 2008 at 7:57 pm
Good luck Ernie at Ning. Cool product.
Jess // Mar 21, 2008 at 8:14 pm
I hope you love the new job. You’re too sweet of a guy to be doing anything with your life that you don’t enjoy. So I hope this new place is a blast!
Phil // Mar 21, 2008 at 10:32 pm
I use Ning as well, go figure. Sounds like a cool opportunity, and like fun. All the best!
Jonathan Aquino // Mar 22, 2008 at 12:12 am
Ernie - Welcome aboard! Looking forward to working with you.
Jose Marques // Mar 22, 2008 at 4:34 am
Ning will rock even more once you’re there! Good luck!
Mex // Mar 23, 2008 at 4:30 am
Congrats big time - Ning should be honoured to have you
Jill Matrix // Mar 23, 2008 at 7:34 am
Good luck!!!!
laura // Mar 24, 2008 at 12:06 am
We’ll see you at 9 tomorrow!
We’re excited to have you.
James McNally // Mar 24, 2008 at 12:22 pm
Congratulations and good luck Ernie. Sorry it didn’t work out with the Mountie, too!
jefframone // Mar 24, 2008 at 8:58 pm
Congrats! Change is a fantastic thing. Getting laid off from my last corporate desk job (in 2004), was the best thing that ever happened to me. I’ve not looked back, nor returned to that world. All the best to you!
Ted Drake // Mar 25, 2008 at 6:34 am
Maybe I should have returned those ning phone calls. Oh well, enjoy the new digs. Will you bring some of the mission district attitude down south every morning?
Jeffrey Keefer // Apr 1, 2008 at 1:11 pm
Ernie, think how lucky you are to be in a really cool company with lots of great buzz, especially as Yahoo seems like it will get worse before it gets better. Congrats on the new digs!
Jeff McCord // Apr 3, 2008 at 6:57 pm
Your honesty is great in this blog post… and there’s nothing wrong with you following your passions. I can’t imagine how the yahoo culture is right now w/ the impending merger going on. There’s nothing wrong w/ leaving somewhere twice.
Good luck!
Jeff McCord
http://www.jeffmccord.org
ResearchBuzz » » ResearchBuzz Roundup 041908 // Apr 20, 2008 at 8:23 am
[...] Jeremy: Yahoo is hiring. Ernie: He’s gone someplace else. [...]
Gil // Apr 22, 2008 at 8:57 pm
Congrats on the new job… just saw your post on SF’s CCC. I’m feverishly looking through Ning’s job postings right now…
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