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After 14.5 years, I decided to leave Google. Growing up in rural California, I could not have imagined where I am today in tech.
I joined Google as a TLM in crawl and indexing systems just after the IPO in November 2004.
I joined Google as a TLM in crawl and indexing systems just after the IPO in November 2004.
Way back then, we were doing things like competing with another search engine for a bigger index. Working with so many PhDs in Search Quality, my impostor syndrome was huge. But I’d been building software for customers at other companies for 10 years,
and I realized my experience and perspective mattered. A few years later, my manager said, “We need your help figuring out all the software to bring our data centers online faster.” My first reaction: I’m not a hardware engineer — are you sure I’m the right person?
He said, “You’re good at fixing problems and bringing people together.” It’s how I started doing cluster management and, later, developer productivity.
That’s what I’ve been doing since 2011. By focusing on helping developers — the humans who write and operate the software — we’ve made a difference in software engineering for Googlers and for the industry as a whole, and I’m grateful that I got to work on DevOps for Google.
From a TLM in Search to a VP of Eng in DevOps, it was a wild ride.
Software engineering is a team sport — we do everything together. I want the industry to have true diversity and inclusion, and I’m committed to working on that for however long it takes.
Software engineering is a team sport — we do everything together. I want the industry to have true diversity and inclusion, and I’m committed to working on that for however long it takes.
Doing software engineering with kindness and empathy and letting people show up as they are is and always will be my life’s work. So I’m moving on to start a company in the developer space.
I always try to bring an “attitude of gratitude.” If you haven’t heard this from me, I want to say it to you now: Thank you. I am so grateful for your support, your creativity, your humor, and your kindness throughout my time at Google.
Its an exciting time to be in tech. We have incredible opportunities to collaborate with each other, to help developers, to help our users, and to make the world better. I hope our paths cross in the future.
