It just feels strange sitting in my very empty cube today. I’m done with my work, I did my farewell lunch, and took all of my stuff home yesterday. When Ray brought his SUV over yesterday to help me cart my stuff home, I told him I felt like I was back in college moving out from the dorm.

Life at Yahoo! really did have more similarity with my college experience than it did with any job I’ve had. We worked hard, pulled some all-nighters, drank some beer, and had a lot of fun. The cafeteria gives you a freshman 15; there is a quad with bands playing during lunch from time to time. I think my cube is about the size of my first dorm room too.

More than anything though, I learned a lot! With 14,000 employees here, I was exposed to so many different ideas, perspectives, cultures, and languages. As a former linguistics student, one of my most interesting points at Yahoo! was in my first cube where no one directly adjacent to my cube spoke English as a native language. Also, none of them spoke the same native language as the other. There were times we sounded like a meeting of the united nations.

After four years here, I guess it is time to “graduate” and move on. How fitting is it then, that the last thing I do at Yahoo! is go to the weekly platform engineering keg party? ;)

P.S. I am however looking forward to no longer working for a company with a “!” at the end of its name. When Yahoo! is at the end of a sentence, it always sounds excited as in “Last Day at Yahoo!.” I swear, the “!” goes with the name, not glee at leaving. :D