Brian Hall’s Post

I'm ready for round five! After 5+ years at Google, I'll be "xoogling" on 9/12. I've REALLY enjoyed working in Google Cloud. We made a lot happen in this period - 10x revenue growth ($5B to over $50B RR), establishing great enterprise partnerships and credibility, building a community of fans and customer successes, and leading in many ways in AI. I feel blessed to have had ~20 years at Microsoft in consumer businesses, product leadership, traveling the world with Steve Ballmer and Bill Gates; experience leading a startup, and 7 years of B2B / Cloud experience at AWS and Google. I think I'm one of the few people who have been VP at all three of the big cloud co's AND done the VC shuffle? I haven't closed on what is next, but am excited to embark on the next 15 year journey. I'll be working in AI - directly or helping build the platforms to take advantage of it. This is so fun right now there is no way I'm getting out of the excitement! There are SO MANY people who I feel blessed to have worked with, across all the products I work with, the sellers at Google who help customers every day, the analysts and press in the industry who help people understand how to benefit from technology, and mostly the customers / developers who are who we really work for, and give the best feedback. it's been a pleasure. I never would have thought that in the heat of the pandemic and after being sued by Amazon for taking a job (for one... https://lnkd.in/guHmYV-d ) that I'd be at Google for over five years. I left Microsoft after 20 years and told myself I'd never be a lifer again... and wanted to do CEO and COO jobs with inspiring technical innovators. but then decided to learn cloud (turned out most of the CEO jobs in Seattle were cloud...) and got to learn from the best at AWS and Google. And 7 years later here we are! Lots of people keep asking me when my book is coming out. I do not have a draft, and don't have plans as I think the good ones have to be salacious, and I don't have that nor want to serve that salad. Long story - but I do just want to say thank you to everyone I've worked with in the last 30 years. From Windows 95, to Internet Explorer cowboys (the DOJ referred to me as "Microsoft executive Brian Hall" when quoting a report I wrote as an intern...), the .com mania when I worked for SteveB, ALL the lessons at Microsoft (esp team online services and Surface), Doppler, AWS, Google... What A RIDE! ALL my work pride comes from the people I've worked with and all the amazing things I've seen you all do. My managers, my peers, the people that bet on me by working for me, and everyone who's challenged me to be better. Thanks all, and will let you know what's next! I may do a monster tag session later for all the people, but figure I just want to say thank you now!