ajarora^1.0

Yesterday, on one of the most important days in the history of Yahoo! Inc., a day when one founder became the new CEO…the other founder took the time to have a random casual lunch with me, a Yahoo intern.

By now you should certainly know that Jerry Yang is the new CEO of Yahoo. You should also know that Jerry co-founded the company with David Filo back in 1996. You might also know that David also plays a highly active role in the company as well. What you may not know that I do know is just how incredible of a person David Filo is.

Yesterday I went to the Yahoo UK office looking for an empty desk to work from. As I turned the corner, to my surprise David (or Filo as everyone around here calls him) was sitting by himself. By now I wasn’t quite as intimidated by the luminary since I had talked to him in length last year at Hack Day ‘06, and seen him all weekend at London Hack Day. It might seem like a cliché to say that he acts just like a regular guy, but he takes regularity to an extreme. He’s more of a regular guy than any regular guy I know. I’ve seen him on multiple occasions talk to (rather mostly listen to) random kids for hours after events when every other Yahoo employee had already left. This weekend I saw Filo and Ash wait in the food line twice for 45 minutes (really bad food too) instead of going to the empty staff line. I even saw them hand out sandwiches to kids (the catering situation was frantic after the temporary evacuation). Definitely not your typical billionaire.

So I just sat down at the desk right behind him. I’ve been thinking about pinging some interesting people at our company for lunch to pick their brains a bit…but I was planning on starting on the bottom (with the coffee-shop girls) and working my way up to the execs. But suddenly I grew a pair and stood up and asked him if he wanted to grab lunch or coffee sometime. So he stood up and said, “Sure, let’s go.”

Somehow (it seems absurd) he remembered me and my hack from last year’s Hack Day. He seemed genuinely interested in some of my ideas and had plenty of questions for me as well. Looking back I’m shocked that I kind of interrupted him a couple times, as it was such a brisk discussion.

As soon as I got back to my hostel after the Flickr party I found out that Jerry was now Chief Executive. I feel really bad now that I might have interfered with his business that’s way more important than our chat (at least a billion times more important). Although he looked busy, he was cool as a cucumber…so I just figured it was a typical day for a big company exec. I just can’t believe how engaged he was in our conversation with all of the business affairs he had to attend to on such a huge day.

Maybe it was mostly because he’s such a good guy, but I honestly think he took a break to hang out with me because he likes to know about real people. I truly hope that some day I can be half the man he is, because I know that if our roles were reversed and an intern came up to me on that day, I would have laughed in his face and maybe conjured up a, “Sorry kid, big business today.”

One of the things that I asked him is why he, as a founder, still plays such a huge role at Yahoo (even though I’m sure he’s been asked that question hundreds of times). He replied, “What else would I do?” and then expounded on how there are such great things going on in the industry and so much innovation to be seen. It was so motivating to see that he still hasn’t lost the excitement.

I’m so glad that David has such an important role at Yahoo and that it’ll almost certainly be even bigger. If Jerry Yang is anything like David Filo (and I think he is), things are going to be getting even better.

Everyone’s already talked about all the lightning striking twice and stuff…so I’ll keep it short. London Hack Day rocked, and I wouldn’t have had it any other way.

I’ll tell you what else rocks: all the Yahoos that were there “represetin’” (and the beebers too!). Especially Dan, Nate, Tara, M-Roth, and Leonard for showing the intern how to wrap up the weekend in style

As I sit here on a plane from LAX to London (12 hours!) and read Chad’s post on the history of Hack Day (I had synced up reader using Google Gears), I am once again reminded of how it is that I got here. But many of you (I say that pretending people read this blog) may not know the story.

I’ve revived the post about hack day from my old blog…and after that day I obviously felt that Yahoo! would be the best place to work in the world. So I emailed the guy who set it up and told him the same thing. Next thing I know I had an offer for an internship with the Yahoo! Developer Network.

There was no doubt that this internship would be better than my last one in Indianapolis. My manager last year had gone to Purdue as well and lived in a church at Christian co-op for his first few years, and commuted 2 hours a day to school after that. Don’t get me wrong, that’s commendable and all…but he certainly lacked social and communication skills (no offense if you read this some day), and our team had little respect for him because of it.

Chad and Dan are the complete opposite. Ever since my first day they (and the rest of the team) have treated me like family, and it’s unbelievable how much that kind of environment facilitates work as well.

There’s kind-of joke where everybody I meet out here calls me “the intern”. But the reason it’s funny is because nobody treats me like one. I’m open to express ideas and project proposals like any other guy at the company…something that would typically be impossible because of how shy I am anyway.

So when I told Chad that I’d found a cheap ticket to London for this weekend and asked if it was OK if I took a few days off to go to Hack Day, he said he’d be glad to cover it and that I could work from the UK office. Yahoo rocks. I’m even gonna stay in a youth hostel in the city so I can save this awesome company some cash (I’m trying to have some corporate responsibility!).

Before I started I daydreamed about working with and talking to the geniuses that had given talks at Hack Day, and coming up with ideas and features for products. But I had convinced myself that it was a completely naïve notion and that there was no way that real work could be as great as Hack Day was. But those things are exactly what I’ve been doing, and there’s no place I’d rather be than at work.

So now I’m on my way to London for a Hack Day. And it all started with the first Open Hack Day last year. Hack Day changed my life, and I’m not the only one.

Chad said it best last year when he spoke about putting Hack Day together with Bradley:

It was Bradley who gave me that patented Bradley look that said, “dude, this is TOTALLY POSSIBLE!” and quietly lit the fire under me to make it happen. I’m hoping that everyone out there has a boss like this one day. Some of my fondest memories of this whole process were high-fiving Bradley in various meetings as we started to get the sense of what we were planning. We just couldn’t wait to share what we were doing with the world. Thanks, Bradley, for making work so fun.

Sorry for all the lame mushiness lately…but multiply what Chad said about Bradley x10 for every dude on the team.

Update: I’ve created a Yahoo! Trip Plan for London Hack Day