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• My Last Day at Google

  Sunday, Mar 16, 2008 4:14AM / Standard Entry / Members only
  3 comments

  Yesterday was my last day at Google.

  It’s hard to believe that when I graduated from Stanford 4 years ago, I had been planning to take a job as a tax software engineer. During my Google interview, Marissa convinced me that this was a bad idea and I decided to join Google’s Associate Product Manager program instead. That turned out to be one of the best decisions of my life! Working at Google has been an amazing, life-changing experience. It’s an incredible company with a unique, quirky culture and tons of passionate, talented people. I feel very lucky to have been able to work with so many brilliant engineers on such fascinating products used by millions of people.

  Leaving Google was a tough decision for me. I was very happy working on Google Maps and oftentimes felt like I had the best job in the world. I became the Maps PM at age 22 and was blown away by how much responsibility they were willing to give someone so young. The work was fun, challenging, and very rewarding. I wasn’t looking for a new job, but a great opportunity fell in my lap that I felt I had to take. More on that in a future post.

  On my last day at Google, I decided to bake cookies for the Maps team one last time. Since it was Pi Day (3/14), I made Rolo pie cookies and passed them out at 1:59pm. Get it? 3/14 1:59 = 3.14159 = pi.

  

  I also took some photos on my last day, but I wish I had taken more.

  A lot of people have been part of my life at Google, but I’d really like to thank John Hanke, Brian McClendon, Prakash Janakiraman, Elizabeth Hamon Reid, Elizabeth Windram and Evan Parker for building and leading a kickass organization that was awesome to work in; the My Maps team for being the best project/team I ever worked on at Google; the whole Maps team for all the launches and lunches; Thai Tran, Chikai Ohazama and Bret Taylor for teaching me how to be a PM; Jonathan Goldman and Kenson Yee for the yogurt and the floaty balls; Nina Kang, Jim Muller, Dan Egnor and the folks in the geo-team chatroom for the daily snark and chitchat; Matthias Ruhl for the 4am craziness of the Movies Onebox launch; the Froogle team for toughening me up; and the APM Class of ‘04.

  Thanks for a great 4 years, Google!