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(1983 - 1987)
2022
2022
Stay tuned!
2011 - 2022
2011 - 2022
I was an engineering director of Better Together, which improved the coherency of Google's consumer hardware and software as a single product suite. That team was rooted in a still-unannounced tech project that I started in 2018. Before that, in 2016 I started Pixel Software Experience, which was primarily responsible for the Pixel phone's userland software. Reviewers rated Pixel 2016 "the best phone on the planet, period" (https://twitter.com/wired/status/788365877389426688), and Pixel 2017 "the best smartphone money can buy" (https://www.wired.com/story/the-best-smartphone/). I also provided engineering and cultural support during the 2017-18 acquisition of HTC's phone team. Earlier, I managed Android's build, continuous integration, and test-infrastructure teams, as well as parts of the Chrome Platform team (Chrome Apps, Chrome Extensions, App Runtime for Chrome, Physical Web, and Fizz). I've worked at Google twice, first from 2003-2008, and then from 2011-2022. My prior tenure there is described below.
2009 - 2013
2009 - 2013
My wife and I developed and marketed iPhone apps. I also did some consulting gigs.
2011 - 2011
2011 - 2011
I migrated an Engineering team of frontend and backend specialists from a legacy Java codebase to a lean, high-quality Ruby on Rails product. Along the way, we adopted many modern agile methodologies: test-driven development, collective code ownership (which included broadening individual engineers' specialized skill-sets), continuous deployment, pair programming, code reviews, and brief, week-long iterations. I personally contributed substantial amounts of code to the new Rails codebase and to the deployment and operations infrastructure. As I departed the organization, the newly invigorated team of full-stack engineers was proud to be hosting paying customers on a low-debt Rails codebase, and confident enough to begin migrating the product itself toward the company's next-generation product plans.
2010 - 2011
2010 - 2011
The Next Big Thing started at Sunfire.
2008 - 2009
2008 - 2009
During my time at this startup that aims to disrupt the mutual-fund industry, we completed a major refactoring of our service-oriented architecture that enabled us to revise our frontend code from PHP to another web framework, and extended our reach from Facebook to OpenSocial-based platforms. I also wrote an early version of Wealthfront's continuous deployment system, as well as a spartan but functional data warehouse. The Engineering team nearly doubled in size during my time at the company. I also helped streamline and tweak various processes in Engineering, particularly centered around prioritization and iteration planning, that dramatically improved the sustainability and consistency of the team's high output.
2003 - 2008
2003 - 2008
Part of the Gmail team at launch. Contributor to Google Desktop Search, Firefox referrals, Google Books, and download server. Creator of Google Gears browser-extension project and Omaha client autoupdater project. Longtime member of engineering hiring committee. Recipient of three Founders Awards (Gmail, Desktop, Chrome/Omaha).
2002 - 2003
2002 - 2003
As a cofounder and engineer, I did a little of everything at this anti-spam startup that built an incredible Outlook/Outlook Express plugin to stop spam and manage the inbox. I wrote the two-phase stub installer and autoupdater, the PHP/MySQL/Authorize.net website that sold our product directly to consumers, several core parts of the common library, and the license-key subsystem. I helped with COM plumbing, user-interface design and implementation, code reviews, bug hunting and squishing, and the million other things that tiny startups need to do to succeed.
1998 - 2002
1998 - 2002
At our post-acquisition party, someone ran the numbers and announced that I was a close second place in lines of code contributed to the company codebase over the company's lifetime (first place was Dave Kloba). While at AvantGo, I built new products. I reverse-engineered competitors' products. I visited tech partners to beg them for new hooks into their code. I mentored and managed other engineers. I spent weeks in a Redmond war room building components later shipped with Microsoft's Pocket PC platform. I introduced Extreme Programming (an early variant of agile methodologies) to the engineering team. I did performance reviews, even through the painful dot-com crash. I joined AvantGo as a junior engineer and left as their chief architect. It felt like an entire career compressed into about 40 months.
1994 - 1997
1994 - 1997
The highlight of my career as a litigator at this West Los Angeles entertainment law firm was receiving a hug from my client, Fred Goldman, the day in 1997 that our eight-person team obtained a verdict holding O.J. Simpson liable for the wrongful death of Ron Goldman, Fred's son. Shortly thereafter the punitive damages phase of the trial was complete, awarding over $30 million for our client. Just as any junior litigation associate at a large law firm, I did a lot of legal research and writing, draft discovery, and occasional law and motion. I left shortly after the Simpson verdict; law wasn't my passion, and it showed.