It seems like we're missing some important information. I'd be interested to know what he did before going to Google - i.e. he didn't go there straight from uni

It seems like we're missing some important information. I'd be interested to know what he did before going to Google - i.e. he didn't go there straight from university. So he worked for Jacques, then left and some unspecified stuff happened in the middle, and now he's at Google. What did he do in that period that made him so valuable?