Quote:
“From Wilderness to Civilization or from the Woods to the Cities. I sometimes call the current situation the World Wild Web... it will transform to the World Civilized Web... with a systematic structure.” - Prof. Jehoshua “Shuki” Bruck, Caltech
Favorite Moment(s):
Participating in Hack Days is a lot of fun. It’s amazing how far you can go in 24 hours given all Yahoo! APIs, code and data.
What have you done to be a better Yahoo?
Since Yahoo! is so large, I tried to quickly understand what the typical product roadmap is, who is responsible for what, and what the priorities are. I learned how a product develops all the way from the spark of inspiration to launching a multi-million user product. It helped me navigate my way more easily. For forthcoming public research you can follow my blog http://yury.name/blog.
Are you able to think big at Yahoo? How?
Yes. The trick is to focus on what users want, rather than on what we can make. You have to make sure that MANY users want this. And then you need to think big about the best way to execute it.
What specific Yahoo! project has made the biggest impact on you and why?
My focus is to move Yahoo Search from keyword matching in web documents toward solving underlying user tasks and a model that really understands our users. Users can not precisely describe their problems in just three words. So my challenge is to improve our tools, creating a product that offers suggestions and an interactive search process that is analogous to the way users think. Once we get the question right, answering it becomes much easier.
What surprised you most about your internship at Yahoo and why?
I found out that another member of Yahoo! Research graduated from the same high school as me. The “small world” effect :)
What made you choose Yahoo! as a place to work?
Number one: openness. I believe you should talk to the world all the time when you work in web technologies.
Number two: the strongest team in the world. Yahoo! Research is the best research organization in web technologies. More papers, more awards, more influence in real world technology than any one else. And really bright people. I am so happy to be a part of the team.
