Born-again Google CEO Larry Page fires 3 top engineers
After letting Eric Schmidt take the lead for many years, Google founder Larry Page is now getting ready to take over as CEO once again. Apparently, Page doesn’t fully share Schmidt’s approach; he has already made it clear he wants to bring back the spirit from the early days.
Following his meetings with top-level management, and especially a long talk with Alan Eustace, Google’s Senior Vice President of Engineering and Research, Page told many members of the board he’s rather unhappy with a number of employees from the engineering departments. Eustace, speaking last week at the presentation of his book The Good, The Bad and the Evil Programmer, warned the audience that Page will be merciless in reviewing the merits of top developers.
Eustace’s prediction was spot-on. In a press release yesterday, Page revealed that he had personally interviewed 3 engineers, who had been regarded as virtually untouchable geniuses before, and told them in no unclear terms their assistence was no longer required – he actually crammed their personal items in a box and watched while security escorted them off the premises, sources at Google headquarters report. In the press release, Page made no secret of who had been sacked, and elaborated on exactly how dangerous, incompetent or simply annoying they were.
Below follows who were struck by Mr. Page’s rage, and his explanation for their sudden banishment.
Marco Zennaro, Senior Engineer
Page: “Marciano joined us in 2005 as a junior engineer, and steadily worked his way up. He worked on many important projects, such as GMail and Maps. However, after careful examination of the circumstances leading to promotions, it became apparent that in each case, critical co-workers or direct supervisors had disappeared, moved abroad or died just around that time. After seeing that bloody axe in his cubicle I’m afraid of sleeping at night, but I really think we need to kick this guy out.”.
Craig Cornelius, Lead Architect
Page: “Craig is a very creative person, who contributed many great ideas. We gave him space and time to work on his own projects, such as Wave. I still wonder how he got us all so excited about that. I think he figured out a way to get something in the air at the office… anyway, after Wave didn’t take off he just couldn’t let it go and came up with something similar – I believe he called it Google Tsunami. And then I visited him at home – he was living in a kind of flying saucer with a bunch of gnomes. Totally nuts.”
Dave Burke, Engineering Director
Page: “Dave is an amazing guy, I must admit that. Incredibly smart actually. Last thing I heard, he got on a 12-hour airplane trip and came out with a great new app. That’s simply unbelievable. And that’s also the problem. He’s just too smart for me. When he starts talking, it’s like aliens from an advanced civilization are telling me about the future. I’m all for visionary, revolutionary stuff, but he makes me look like a simple farmer. I can’t have that kind of embarrassment as a CEO.”.
Page concluded the press release by announcing that he will continue employee reviews by examining lunch habits of product managers at the cafetaria.
