Buh-bY!e

The week before last, I announced my plans to leave Yahoo! to those following me on Facebook and Twitter (oh yeah, I told my team in person first 😉 ), and last Tuesday, February 12 was my last day in the office. I’ve already sent out an internal farewell email, and I really appreciate the unexpected number of very kind responses. I guess I consider this post my public farewell to Yahoo!.

First of all, thank you! Thank you from the bottom of my heart to everyone with whom I had the pleasure to work in my nearly 4 years. I met some great people at Yahoo!, and I look forward to continuing our personal and professional relationships wherever my career may take me. A special thanks to those who took a chance on me — Gerald See, Toby Coppel, Keith Nilsson, Gerry Horkan, Marco Boerries, Dan Rosensweig, Paul Brody, and Patrick Barry. At seemingly every step in my Yahoo! career, I was an unproven quantity pushing the bounds of the responsibilities that should be reasonably entrusted to someone of my age and experience. My time at Yahoo! would not have been anywhere near as challenging, educational, and exciting without you placing your faith in me, and I hope I’ve made you proud.

By far, the most challenging and fulfilling role I held at Yahoo! was the last 20 months I spent working on the Connected Life Desktop team. We built a fantastic team, that was not only exceedingly talented and hard-working but also tremendous fun. The thing I already miss the most is the daily Widgets team 1pm lunch. Regardless of what else was going on, this was a constant bright spot in my day and reminder of why I loved my job. Thanks more than I can express to Ed Voas, Bryan Mayes, Scott Derringer, Shan-lyn Ma, Brady Wood, Laurie Voss, Matt Hackett, Rob Marquardt, Ricky Romero, Marcus Harvey, Jet Lim, Matthew Lock, Michael Galloway, Ken Neville, Sam Magnuson, Sylvio Marcondes, Kevin Driscoll, Derrick Whittle, Ashit Gandhi, Joe Morrissey, Justin Whittle, John Hayes, Steve “Dallas” Dowds, and everyone else on D-1 and in Atlanta for putting up with my shit, making me look good, and just being good people. It would be my great pleasure to work with any of you again (if you’d have me 🙂 ), and count me as a reference anytime.

As for why I left, I spent more time at Yahoo! than anywhere else in my life since elementary school — a full 13% of my 27 years on this earth — and I’ve been ready to move on for a little while. Recent events provided an opportunity for me to transition my responsibilities, and I took it. For right now, my plan is to take some time off to travel and do some of the things I love, like skiing (I’m actually writing this from Aspen 😀 ), that I haven’t been able to do as much the last few years. I’m also following Scoble’s (pretty sage, IMHO) advice on unemployment, which means I’ll be attending events and taking meetings on my travels. So if you have any interesting ideas on things I should check out, please drop me a line at jonathan[at]jonathanhstrauss[dot]com.

Yahoo! people, please keep in touch by connecting with me on Facebook and/or LinkedIn. For those interested, my travel schedule is below and I’ve started a photo set on Flickr to chronicle this little adventure. Best of luck, and keep in touch.

P.S. Oh, and can someone *please* get my photo off the investor relations site already?! 😉