Working at a smaller company

I've never worked for a company the size of shopping.com, around 400 people globally. If you look at my linkedin profile you'll see that I've always worked for a 1000+ person company. While Shopping.com is part of Ebay, it still has retained it's structure and its own office as an subsidiary. Here are some of the things I've enjoyed in the first few months on the job, that I didn't seem to have with my previous employers.

• Getting the Welcome presention from the CFO
  
• Meeting the CEO and CTO on day three
  
• Having the CTO and CEO at an employee feedback session
  
• Almost every part of the organization is represented in the office (we still have a big group in Israel).
  
• The business owners are local and you can walk to their desks.
  
• An overall sense that the company is run out of this office.
  
• The entire office celebrating launches (literally)
  

Technorati Tags:Shopping.com

Dave Chappelle

I got to see Dave Chappelle on friday night at The Punchline in San Francisco. It was a very impromptu performance as tickets went on sale on Thrs. morning. He plans to make more appearances in 2007 as his "no compete" clause with Comedy Central recently expired.

He was funny, didn't really have a skit per say. You could say he was trying out material or just having a conversation with about 150 people. The Punchline is a small club, getting to see Dave in this venue was a treat.

Technorati Tags:Dave Chappelle, Comedy, The Punchline

Speakers in 2006

Shopping.com is no different then AOL Mountain View when it comes to having brownbags, tech talks, what ever you want to call em. Since being here we've had some pretty interesting speakers come talk to us. They include:

Reid Hoffman - CEO of LinkedIn

Chris Anderson - Author The Long Tail

Mark Goldstein - CEO of Loyalty Labs

Doesn't every company in the Valley bring in speakers every once in a while?


Technorati Tags:Speakers,Chris Anderson,
Mark Goldstein,Reid Hoffman

Jury Duty

I just had Jury Duty this week. I've done my civic duty for the year and was gladly not chosen, not even interviewed, for the case. I was lucky enough to get chosen for a 2003 murder trial. I say lucky because I think everyone should sit on a trail once in their life just for the experience. I wouldn't want a murder trial again though. Jury duty and being a juror is an interesting, yet boring at times, process to be part of. If you like people watching then you will like the getting to know the prospective jurors. You learn about them via the short biography they must provide the court as well as their responses to the questions the prosecution and defense ask.

Technorati Tags:Jury Duty

Epinions

In 2004 Dealtime bought Epinions.com and created Shopping.com. Epinions is one of my projects and I plan to talk about them a lot here. We're currently giving away a lot of money during our Holiday Write-Off Sweepstakes. Come on by and check it out.


Technorati Tags: Epinions, Sweepstakes

Shift Happenz?

I first heard the term "Shift Happens" at a Cheetah Learning PMP crash course. I liked the phrase and use it a lot at work. Project managers always have to deal with change and this was nice way to remind myself that change happens (in work and life) and you need to deal with it. I decided to put a "z" at the end instead of an "s" since someone took shifthappens.blogspot.com

Turns out a motivational speaker named James Feldman claimed the domain shifthappens.com so that was out too.

I did create shifthappens over at my old stomping grounds, AOL Journals, but decided I would wanted to use Blogger instead. I know that some of my friends at AOL might not be happy with my choice. Since I am going to be touching on some work related thoughts I figured I should not use the platform of my old job. Ebay's blogging platform isn't much to write home about so I settled with Google's Blogger.

Can't get better than this (first week @ SDC)

What a first week of work. I happened to start at Shopping.com the week we launched a site redesign of shopping.com and new brand, DoorOne. Doorone is our new Shopping Comparison Site in the UK, France, Germany, and Australia. This took place at the end of Sept. in case anyone was wondering.

There was a lot of celebrating going on this week, it'll be hard to top this when I take over.

Welcome

Welcome to my blog. This is my first post in my new blog and first post since leaving AOL. At AOL I worked on the AOL Journals product so blogging was part of the job, sort of. Here's my old blog.

I plan to talk about my thoughts and opinions on matters relating to my new company*, my current profession as a project manager, internet/software industry topics, and anything else I feel like.

* I work for shopping.com, which is an Ebay company. The content you are reading here is my opinion and not the opinion of Ebay or Shopping.com.