Google's Employment Transition - The UpStream

Google's Employment Transition

posted Sunday Apr 10, 2011 by Scott Ertz

Google's Employment Transition

This has been quite a week for Google as far as staffing is concerned. Larry Page, Google founder, returned as CEO on Monday after Eric Schmidt's departure. Page's intentions are to return Google to the start-up feel that created the innovation behind Google Search and Maps. Ironically, as part of that start-up attempt, he is asking execs to sign multi-year deals to stay with the company. It turns out not everyone is interested in doing that.

One example is Jonathan Rosenburg, chief of product development for Google. He has always been open about the fact that he planned to leave Google when his children reached college age and signing a multi-year deal with our future Internet overlords interfered with that plan. He announced he will be leaving after the summer. He said it was only fair to the company to allow them to deal with the restaffing now when the shake-ups are already happening instead of waiting until plans were already being developed.

Eric Schmidt, departed CEO and future coauthor with Rosenberg, said of the leader,

Jonathan is phenomenal–hugely energetic, strategic, a man of real principle who always puts the user first. He's been crucial to our success over the last nine years and I cannot thank him enough for everything he’s done. It's been wonderful working with him–and great fun.

To read what Larry Page had to say and to see what the future holds for Rosenberg, hit the break.

Larry Page, returned CEO of Google, said,

We tried to hire Jonathan multiple times because he was the only person we could imagine doing the job. It's lucky we were so persistent because he's built an amazing team–hiring great people who've created amazing products that have benefited over a billion users around the world.

It is true that there is a lot of praise deserved for this man. He is, after all, the person who approved Google Buzz and Google Wave, both of which have been incredibly profitable for the company and helpful for millions of users. He also wrote a company-wide email in 2009 titled The meaning of open, which is not at all ironic. With all of this in his past, what does he think of the job he did?

I think I've done the things that I set out to do. My focus has been on building a great team, and hiring the best people in the world. I think I've also been very focused in studying the manner in which we manage at Google, and working very hard on developing the next set of Google management talent. We're obviously going through a transition here; Larry is stepping into the role of CEO. And I think it was important to him that he establish and build around an executive team that intended to be here for many, many years.

So with that, Google waves goodbye to its product manager.

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