Breaking: Stewart playing with Sonnet, taking fewer meetings

Stewart responds to the Valleywag post:

Aaaaaaaactually, I'm going on paternity leave, not leaving Yahoo! (I took some of my leave in July and found that I rushed back a little early.) I am actually going to be changing more diapers and coaxing more burps for a while (thanks for getting that right - I do love her!) but have no plans to give up the paycheck just yet -- and I even have an uncomfortable number of meetings planned for when I'm supposed to be out on leave :)

Major improvements to Yahoo Search

Want to congratulate Jeff, Vish, Tim, Eckart, Luke and Tom and the cast of hundreds who launched the improvements to Yahoo Search last night. I've seen some folks in the blogosphere underestimate the nuance and ultimately impact of this innovation. Making a change this radical is a bona fide "big deal", and there is a lot of subtlety involved. I've been using it for a bit, and am duly impressed. Kudos to the gang.

Valleywag fishes, Brickhouse thriving!

I read this post with some measure of amusement. We'll be unveiling 3 or 4 major initiatives before the end of the year, which really represent the first complete turn-of-the-crank for the Brickhouse / Advanced Products model. Brickhouse is thriving. You'll be hearing more about these soon, and though I'm quite tempted to crow about them now... I'll resist.

Regarding the departures, Pipes "graduated" from Brickhouse (and hence left my group) several quarters ago. (And Ed had actually moved on from Pipes months ago.) From concept to hand-off Pasha spent more than a year on the project - frankly longer than we generally plan for... Our model is literally based on the premise that the DNA required to innovate as a "founder" on a small team is fundamentally different than the DNA required to operate on ongoing concern within a big company. (Hence Brickhouse.) Hence this kind of turnover is not only expected, but anticipated and baked into the model. We definitely ask our "founders" to help with tech transfer and transition, which both Pasha and Ed did in a totally responsible fashion. I know they both want to see Pipes succeed.

Frankly, my group is almost designed for "churn." I've been psyched to have "spun in" folks like Marc Davis (into our Connected Life business unit), Cameron Marlow (into Yahoo! Research), Matthew Rothenberg (into Flickr), etc. It's definitely a drag when talented folks "spin out" of my group and leave Yahoo, but it happens. Sometimes they go to Google. Sometimes they come back from Google. In fact that happened to Pasha. ;-)

I've got nothing but respect and admiration for both Ed and Pasha, and definitely wish them well. We'll miss them, but Brickhouse is thriving. Go Fish!