Fun quotes

About 3 and a half years ago, when I started interviewing with Google, my first phone screen was with a fellow named Vijay. I remember doing well for a good chunk of it, and then blowing some parts at the end. Lucky for me, Vijay focused on the good bits and recommended that Google continue interviewing me.

I learned today that in Vijay's write-up of that interview, he had the following to say:

"I am concerned that based on his previous experience we may not be interviewing him for the correct position. Although he would make an excellent software engineer, I think that perhaps a manager position may be more in order."

Vijay had cause to share this with me today because I took the plunge and finally became a manager. In an odd coincidence, I actually became Vijay's manager, along with a handful of other great folks working on AdWords in New York.

The other notable quote of the day came from Chris, who I've been working with for a few months now:

"Jonathan's been a manager for five minutes and already he's being compared to Idi Amin"

It's taken a long time and a very particular set of circumstances to convince me to take on a management role at Google, but I'm very excited about this new challenge. The Ads team at Google is phenomonal for the pace at which they push out an ever-expanding set of mission-critical features to hundreds of thousands of advertisers around the world. This is an awesome time to take on this role.

PS. To the Google engineers in NY: If you're not already in Ads, come talk to me. I have a long list of great projects with a lot of opportunity to make a big impact.