1. Don’t show up late, and then not apologize.

Call me old-fashioned, but I like candidates that show up on time.  But stuff happens. Traffic happens. Trains don’t run on time like they do in Germany.  But is it really that much to ask to apologize when you’re late to an interview?  Or at least call ahead to warn that you’d be late?

“Punctuality is the courtesy of kings” - quote I remember from the wonderful BOOK not the movie ”Thank You for Smoking” but supposedly its from a Louis XVIII. Its not that 2 minutes here, 5 minutes makes a world of difference in terms of time - its a matter of respect for the other person - and this is important no matter what the role (except maybe - brilliant engineer). 

2. Don’t admit you had a long weekend in Vegas, so you didn’t really have time to prep for the interview.  
Again, this is more about respect for the other person.  In what world is this an appropriate response to your lack of preparation? At the very least, you should try to appear prepared - because yes, at some point in your career, you will have a long weekend in Vegas and won’t be prepared for the important presentation. But the ability to get through those situations passably - is what separates the boys/girls from the men/women. 

3. Don’t be negative about the interviewer’s T-shirt.

Negativity is fine for soul-searching blogs and Yelp reviews.  And sure, you can joke about people’s dress after you’ve landed your job.  But being negative about the company, about industry events, about the T-shirt that the interviewer is wearing - all things which should follow the maxim “If you can’t say something nice, better not say anything at all.” You can think all these things - but do you really have to say them out loud? 

All of these things come down to “RESPECT”. If you have a modicum of respect for someone who is spending the time to consider hiring you and giving you money & a sense of belonging, I think its all common sense….

Otherwise - its much more respectful to cancel an interview, than to go thru with it. In the Web world, you may not want/or care about the job now, but in 2 years this same person may be interviewing you for the dream job, and negative impressions will last a lifetime….

FixYa is headquarted in the Peninsula of the Bay Area - in San Mateo.  We are hiring at every position - product manager, business development, designer, and marketing. So forward this on to anyone that might be looking.

This happened 3 times before in the last 2 years - where I saw a big surge in people from my Yahoo! network asking me to join their “network” - and especially people you would not have expected to be interested in social networks - once for Flickr, then for del.icio.us and finally for Facebook.  First 2 were bought by Yahoo!, and a billion dollar offer was made for the last one.

Is this the last gasp of Yahoo!’s bid to stay independent? Twitter????? (next may be justin.tv.

One factor in their differences that I think is critical to their product direction is that Facebook avoided getting swallowed up by Yahoo! whereas MySpace became part of the Fox-NewsCorp empire.  And I think in small but strategic ways, you see that in the product updates and directions of these two companies. 

Whereas Facebook still operates like a startup and makes major strategic bets like opening membership up to the public and this whole apps platform direction, MySpace has certainly stagnated in the product strategy and features department.  Having been at Yahoo! I can just imagine the “product leaders” at MySpace having to go thru endless committee meetings, research, and bureacracy to change anything in their product, and certainly any major risky bets getting quashed since the main business is such a cash-cow. 

You can also see in MySpace’s international sites (I read Japanese & Chinese) that their “globalization” efforts are purely functional - as they just machine translated the UI and launched it without any real consideration for cultural/social dynamics in those countries.  I am willing to bet lots of yen that some ”not in the target demographic” exec at NewsCorp gave some strategic decision to enter those large Asian markets, without any consideration for the product aspects of entering those markets.

Anyhoo - hats off to Facebook & the Zuck machine for “just doing it” and a very wise decision not to get bought by Yahoo!

All in all, the people were normal folks (as normal as Web designers from the Bay Area can be considered normal), not snooty NYC design types, and mostly very friendly. I heard the attendance numbers were 5000+ (up 60% from last year) so that may have something to do with the normalization of the attendees.  Maybe not as edgy as it once was, and certainly not as entertaining as its Film and Music cousins, but it was certainly a worthwhile professional conference.

Good times…