Goodbye, Google

Friday was my final day as a software engineer at Google.  It's been an exciting 3 years!  I discovered a bug so big that it made the news.  I wrote code that ground over multiple terabytes of data in parallel to help with business decisions.  I helped with the Google Code Jam competitions.  I even wrote internal services that monitored our internal code quality to help with keeping our codebase clean and manageable.  I launched brand-new products and made meaningful improvements to old ones.  Most importantly,  I worked with wonderful colleagues in an environment where I felt appreciated and respected and where I learned to be a better coder every day.

Google isn't by any means a perfect company, but the internal culture is such that one can be candid and open about problems and as such it is constantly improving.  I think that this is not only a lesson that other companies could stand to take an example from, but an example that could be followed in one's personal relationships as well.

So, why did I leave?  After 3 years, I felt that it was time for a new challenge.  I've joined a startup as a partner with two former colleagues.  I'll be making strategic and hiring decisions as well as design and technical decisions and working directly with customers and investors.  Overall, it's a chance to develop new skills besides just my technical ones, and that's pretty exciting!  You'll be hearing more about it soon (there's no attractive website yet,) but you can check out my newly updated CV if you want a hint!