4 ms·

Wow, I had to do a double take when I saw the name. He is a well known SVP at Google, and at least when I was there he was in charge of the majority of enginee

by birken 12y ago

Wow, I had to do a double take when I saw the name. He is a well known SVP at Google, and at least when I was there he was in charge of the majority of engineering. Good for him.

joshu 12y ago
Yeah, he hired me when I was at Google and have kept in touch. When I saw the title, I was like, wow, someone has the same name as Alan.
- foobarqux 12y ago
  Do you happen to know if he is French?
  - oh_sigh 12y ago
    Savoyard
- hueving 12y ago
  >Yeah, he hired me when I was at Google and have kept in touch. So?
  - joshu 12y ago
    > Be civil. Don't say things you wouldn't say in a face to face conversation.
    - hueving 12y ago
      I would say that in person. Your post was purely bragging. It added nothing relevant to the discussion. Although based on the fact that you have a link to a wikipedia article about yourself in your profile, I am clearly barking up the wrong tree.
      - joshu 12y ago
        Did someone shit in your wheaties?
Shebanator 12y ago
The majority? Definitely not. He does run the Knowledge team, which is quite large, but Urs' org alone is quite a bit bigger. But then again, Urs hasn't jumped from the stratosphere.
- nostrademons 12y ago
  Alan's org has grown and shrunk in size over time. When I joined in 2009 it was indeed "the majority of engineering" - I think he had something like 5000 people under him when the company was only a little of 20,000 strong, including all of Search, the various search property teams (which were their own departments at the time), Research, I think Commerce, and probably a few others I'm forgetting. Chrome and Android were tiny - they'd just launched 6 months before - and Social and Cloud didn't exist, although they had precursor projects that were under Apps. I'm trying to remember if Apps was itself under Alan; it might've been, IIRC the three big engineering SVPs were Alan, Urs, and Bill Coughran, with Urs focused on platforms & hardware, Bill on infrastructure, and Alan on everything product-related. Since then I think a lot of infrastructure components have been pulled out of the individual product teams they were supporting and centralized under Urs, the company as a whole has been reorganized along product area lines with each PA getting its own SVP, and many product areas that were brand new then are huge 1000-person orgs. But Google's org chart now certainly doesn't reflect what it was when any given ex-Googler left (not even when I did, a scant 5 months ago; I hear there were at least 2 big re-orgs in the last week).
  - deleted 12y ago
    [deleted]
  - foobarqux 12y ago
    Apparently Pichai was put in charge of product this afternoon. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8506215 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8506215
- joshu 12y ago
  You just be a newer employee. Why are you talking about this stuff publically at all?

by birken 12y ago

Wow, I had to do a double take when I saw the name. He is a well known SVP at Google, and at least when I was there he was in charge of the majority of engineering. Good for him.

joshu 12y ago

Yeah, he hired me when I was at Google and have kept in touch. When I saw the title, I was like, wow, someone has the same name as Alan.

foobarqux 12y ago
Do you happen to know if he is French?
- oh_sigh 12y ago
  Savoyard
hueving 12y ago
>Yeah, he hired me when I was at Google and have kept in touch. So?
- joshu 12y ago
  > Be civil. Don't say things you wouldn't say in a face to face conversation.
  - hueving 12y ago
    I would say that in person. Your post was purely bragging. It added nothing relevant to the discussion. Although based on the fact that you have a link to a wikipedia article about yourself in your profile, I am clearly barking up the wrong tree.
    - joshu 12y ago
      Did someone shit in your wheaties?

Shebanator 12y ago

The majority? Definitely not. He does run the Knowledge team, which is quite large, but Urs' org alone is quite a bit bigger. But then again, Urs hasn't jumped from the stratosphere.

nostrademons 12y ago
Alan's org has grown and shrunk in size over time. When I joined in 2009 it was indeed "the majority of engineering" - I think he had something like 5000 people under him when the company was only a little of 20,000 strong, including all of Search, the various search property teams (which were their own departments at the time), Research, I think Commerce, and probably a few others I'm forgetting. Chrome and Android were tiny - they'd just launched 6 months before - and Social and Cloud didn't exist, although they had precursor projects that were under Apps. I'm trying to remember if Apps was itself under Alan; it might've been, IIRC the three big engineering SVPs were Alan, Urs, and Bill Coughran, with Urs focused on platforms & hardware, Bill on infrastructure, and Alan on everything product-related. Since then I think a lot of infrastructure components have been pulled out of the individual product teams they were supporting and centralized under Urs, the company as a whole has been reorganized along product area lines with each PA getting its own SVP, and many product areas that were brand new then are huge 1000-person orgs. But Google's org chart now certainly doesn't reflect what it was when any given ex-Googler left (not even when I did, a scant 5 months ago; I hear there were at least 2 big re-orgs in the last week).
- deleted 12y ago
  [deleted]
- foobarqux 12y ago
  Apparently Pichai was put in charge of product this afternoon. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8506215 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8506215
joshu 12y ago
You just be a newer employee. Why are you talking about this stuff publically at all?