After spending the last 26 years in this fast-paced technology industry, I’ve finally decided it’s time to slow down. I’ll be retiring in early June. After joining tiny little start-ups like Oracle and then Yahoo!, I never imagined things would take off the way they have. And looking back on my eleven years here at Yahoo!, I’m amazed at all that this company has accomplished. Yahoo! has played such a significant role in building the Internet into what it is today and I’m incredibly proud to have been a part of such a talented team.

As I began contemplating retirement, there were a few milestones that I (along with the executive leadership team) wanted to accomplish prior to my departure. We wanted to realign the company and, subsequently, the Technology Group, successfully launch our new search monetization system (a.k.a. Panama), and build a solid technology leadership team to help take this company to the next level. It was very important to me to drive all the way to my last day here at Yahoo! without distractions of an announcement like this. So we chose to make the announcement and my end date as close as possible.

With all this in place now, I know I’m leaving a strong, dedicated, and focused organization that is ready to define the next wave of the Internet revolution. I’m confident that our tech leadership, together with the help of Jerry Yang (who will be acting as the interim executive sponsor of the Technology Group until we identify my permanent replacement) and David Filo, will continue to push the bar on innovation and create services that hundreds of millions of people will use around the world every day.

There is no question that the thing I’ll miss most about Yahoo! is the team and the people that I got to work with every day. The engineering team at Yahoo! is truly world-class and has so much to be proud of. We have engineering leaders here who pioneered things like personalization, developers who created/contribute to open source projects like PHP, scientists who wrote books on search and information retrieval, and hackers who created close to 1,000 applications in the past year alone. With this kind of talent and drive, there’s no telling what this team can accomplish in the years to come.

Yahoo! is not the kind of company you can just retire from and forget about. It’s more than just using the products everyday or having your kids proud to tell their friends where Dad worked. It’s about being part of something much larger than yourself and being on that ride with an incredibly passionate team.

One of the hardest things about deciding when to leave is the knowledge that Yahoo! is perpetually preparing to share the next big thing with the world. I will miss being on the inside as those unveilings are readied, but I will be watching with great anticipation from the sidelines and rooting for Yahoo! every step of the way.

Zod Nazem
Chief Technology Office & Head of the Technology Group