… is… interesting.
i'm not quite sure what i expected, but it's quite different.
allow me to illustrate:
| Yahoo | Netflix | |
|---|---|---|
| Noise | Lots. There are frequent hallway discussions, keyboards clicking, phones ringing, folks occasionally walking by with ukuleles, you name it. This bubbled over into email and IM and other things that provided a near constant level of white noise. |
Not lots. In fact, the word i'd probably use is near silence. It was actually kind of odd just how quiet it was, and considering how loud the places have been that i've worked at in the past, it was a little disturbing at first. i'm going to assume that it's probably vacation time for a lot of folks and that, but still, the silence is really kinda deafening. |
| Tools | C++, Perl, PHP, Javascript, and just about anything else you can imagine. The rule was "it doesn't matter what you use so long as the job gets done." Sure, there was a base set of tools that most folks used, and if you did use eLisp on a project, you probably wouldn't get a lot of support, but it did mean that building a tool for wide adoption meant providing a platform for various languages to hook into. |
Java Ok, and a little Javascript, but Java is their hammer of choice and it really shows. Just about everything there is Java, including a lot of stuff you wouldn't usually expect. |
| Back end | Unix (FreeBSD/Linux) If your an engineer, you damn well better know how to get around in a Unix environment. Right from the get-go you had to set up an environment and make it viable. Usually you had two boxes, a front end client and a back end server, although it was fairly common for folks to just live in BSD/Linux 100% of the time and use the other box for mail or occasional testing. |
Java Seriously. i asked about getting access to the development boxes and was kinda given a blank stare. i got a company laptop that's hitched to a shared drive. Development is local to that box (since it's all in java) with a push process that comes later. Still, if you're looking for somewhere to ssh into, better go install Cygwin or get that OpenSSH client running on your Mac. |
Thing is, i'm not sure any of this is good or bad compared with the other. Just different.
Funny how working somewhere for nearly a decade sets your expectations. Gotta remember that those things shouldn't be cast in stone.
If you don't like it, I know, uhhh, someone that has a job opening that would fit your skilz… =)
BTW: getting ssh working on a mac is easy — for a client, open Terminal, and run ssh. For the server, just enable remote login in the "Sharing" preference pane.
Yeah, I figured it'd be easy on the Mac. To be honest, it's also pretty easy on Windows with Cygwin too. Still, this is the first place I've worked that doesn't have a bank of servers one can get access to.
'Tis a different world.
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yahoo! is a strange place though. very…different from the rest of the world. maybe netflix is a reflection of what the real world is like outside of yahoo!?