A short love letter to ~8 years on Google Search - 8 things I’m grateful for.

 After a few weeks off, I started a new gig within Google yesterday and it hit me that for the first time in almost eight years I won’t be working on some part of Google Search. Eight years ago, I told the team when I was interviewing that I was “looking for a place to call home for a while and grow there”. My experiences here more than met that need. 

I used to write a regular “10 things about…” listy column for a while at a college newspaper. So in that style here’s 8 things (one for each year) I feel grateful to have experienced/learned in this time. Also, like that column which I banged out the night before it was due, this post is something that I don’t need to do, yet I feel somehow compelled to do (and so it’ll likely be longer and less crisp than it should be :-))   

1. It actually is awesome to work on something so many people use and love, and that positively touches people’s lives.
   
   

There’s a talk I give externally about Search and a line I often end up using is how the mission inspires everyone that works on it simply because we know that a large portion of humanity will have a better life if we do our job right. The last time I gave the talk (knowing that I likely won’t work on Search soon), I had to stop myself from choking up.

The number of times I’ve seen friends, relatives, strangers, celebrities or random people on the street (yeah, I’m curious what people are doing on their phones around me :-)), using something my team has worked on or a friend has worked on still blows me away.  

And it isn’t just the number of people (literally billions), but the frequency of how they used it and just how much it means to them that still leaves me tingling when I think about it. 

2. The insight into how people think, individually and in aggregate, is something that’ll stay with me forever.
   
   One of my favorite parts of the job is just the understanding working on Search gives you about people in general; what people are searching for is what they’re thinking, feeling or curious about at any given point.
   
   Understanding that at the level of queries and search journeys that people are on and how they evolve their needs and habits over time, but also at a community, country and planet level, is something I’ve enjoyed watching and thinking about so very much.   

3. The people I learned from
   
   You often hear people talk about the people they worked with being the best part of their job (especially when they’re leaving that job! :-)). 

I think that’s true for me as well, but the thing that hit me even when I joined Search was how many people I met that had already been here for well over a decade.

There’s something specific about the people that are attracted to, and then stay with, a project like Search. There’s a sense of mission, curiosity about the world, technical brilliance, product judgment and willingness to adapt and grow that is just incredibly inspiring to be around day in and out.  

And Google truly encourages a collegial, no-jerks-tolerated atmosphere that worked so very well for me.

4. The day-to-day product decision-making is kind of amazing
   
   The ultimate test of Product Management is the quality of decisions you make. 

Firstly, eight years gives you a lot of time to see what decisions stick and you got right, and what you didn’t. It isn’t often you get to see the implications of years-long bets you made pay off and then get to build on that bet.  

But secondly, the nuance and complexity of a lot of the decisions you make on Search is especially hard. A lot of product calls aren’t binary, and you learn to think in tradeoffs a lot. You’re often weighing changes that are positive on some queries, but negative on others and that affect consumers and the ecosystem in different ways. 

Making them yourself and coaching teams to make them has intellectually been incredibly stimulating, and something I enjoy probably way too much. I used to tell my teams that my favorite thing to do (that I frankly got less and less to do as my responsibilities grew) is to spend time with launch evals and side-by-sides and playing with recall sets.   

5. The number of products and the range I got to work on has been special  
   
   The thing I hadn’t planned on was just how many different domains/products I’d end up looking at. I joined with the intent of building out TV and Movies within Search but over time took on responsibility not just for all the Media verticals (Books, Music, Video games etc.), but also Events, playing into my own strong personal interests in these verticals.
   
   I drifted into being responsible for all Answers on Search for a while, and then the Knowledge Graph, which helped scratch my itch to go deep technically. I surprised myself building a UX framework for Search overall, and by working on voice and understanding as we built the Google Assistant. I delighted mostly myself by kicking off the Delight area within Search. 
   
   

My proclivity to work on ecosystems and platforms ended up pulling me into a project that ended up building a metadata, understanding and personalization platform that powers most media experiences across Google’s software and hardware products and working with most of our media partners.

The odd part is when you’re in it, you don’t completely realize how many different things your teams have done. It took me looking back to appreciate the range of things. 

6. The people that grew around me, even as I grew up.
   
   

Watching people on my team mature - going on to manage teams of their own, making higher quality and more ambitious decisions year after year, and being a mentor to other product managers, designers, business people and engineers has probably been more important to me than the product work.

One of the things I’ve realized over the years is that meaningful, deep relationships at work are a huge part of my day-to-day happiness. So seeing people on my team grow, as well as learning from more experienced people in the org that adapted as they took on more expansive roles has been hugely impactful on my happiness here. 

A manager in a previous job once told me “you’re not here to make friends”, but I’ve always believed that you're happier when you do and so feel lucky that I’ve made so many here. 

7. Global thinking and working with people all over the world.
   
   I realized that over this time, the scale of the product not only meant I was thinking about people’s needs all over the world (research trips and partner summits literally on every inhabited continent), but also building with people all over the world, as we had offices distributed across the globe. 
   
   You learn so much not only when you travel, but when you work with folks how backgrounds and perspectives are completely different from yours.  

8. This job has given me random experiences I’d have never considered possible.
   
   On my first month on the job I was asked to join, for reasons I still don’t completely understand, a meeting with Christopher Nolan. I shared a stage with Karan Johar to talk about Search. I didn’t have a bucket list, but I made one up and put this right there. There’s a bunch of other items, big and small, that have mattered a bunch to me and made me go “Did I really get to do that?” later.  

So for all of the above, and a few other reasons, I’m so grateful and thankful to all the people that I worked with and gave me the opportunity to work with them, and the chance to work the world’s favorite Search Engine. :-)