Exclusive Yahoo Sunnyvale Campus Tour
Today I went on an exclusive tour of Yahoo's Silicon Valley (Sunnyvale) campus guided by our Overture account rep and accompanied by another coworker. It was actually pretty amazing, especially if you compare it to Google's campus. The Yahoo! campus must be at least 4 times larger than Google's. It really reminded me of the fact that Yahoo has been around the block for a while and Google is still the new kid.

The buildings are all less than 4 years old and look like they were just finished being built. The grass in between the main buildings is the most lush I've ever seen and there's a big red star (painted grass I assume) that must be at least 25 ft. across in the middle of the lawn. I was taken to the entrance where the receptionist has a nice area full of every type of gum and mint imaginable. There are several cafe's inside that resemble a Starbuck's. The good part is that you don't have to pay for any of the food or drink they serve: if you're a Yahoo! employee.

Their workout facility resembles that of a top-notch gym you'd pay a lot of money to join. They have video games in nearly every building I went in and most worked well. I did enjoy a game of table tennis with an Overture employee, he kicked my butt easily, next time he's all mine.
We had lunch at their cafeteria and were amazed at not only the varieties of food offered but also the sheer number of people eating there. There must've been 2,000 people. Since there was nowhere to sit down we joined a man who was eating by himself. Come to find out he's the facilities manager and was originally an Inktomi employee. He rattled off every big name at Yahoo and how the acquisition of Inktomi ended up in every employee being let go except for the search engineers. He said Inktomi didn't focus enough on search and thought it's other business areas were where it would make it's money, search was just the red-headed step child. Then it was the search folks who were the diamonds in the rough and had the last laugh.

We also went to the Yahoo! store which is full of really cool stuff like Yahoo! dog collars and leashes and other goofy stuff like volleyballs and baby bibs. They have every imaginable type of furniture with their logo on it and in purple and yellow. It's not really apparent that their main colors are purple and yellow until you visit the campus and realize that everything is in those two colors, even the cubicles. The only people that weren't in cubicles were the NOC employees. NOC is the group that monitor the Yahoo! network and all it's servers. It's honestly like mission control at NASA. They have 12 ft. glass walls and specially designed chairs to ease fatigue and a huge screen on the wall displaying Yahoo!'s vital signs like a patient in the intensive care unit.

All in all I must say I was impressed with what Yahoo! has done and what they've become in 10 short years. You can't fully appreciate what they're doing without visiting headquarters and seeing the real people that run the show behind the scenes. It's truly an unforgetable experience.


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Jason Dowdell | permalink | +marktd |