Competition in the tech industry has always been fierce, and it’s not uncommon to find high-profile tech executives who transfer from one huge tech company to another. Some good examples are Sheryl Sandberg, who transferred from Google to Facebook; Matias Duarte, who worked for Palm and then transferred to Google; Marissa Mayer, who transferred to Yahoo after long years of working for Google; David Berman, who found himself at RingCentral years after he left WebEx; and Ray Ozzie, who jumped over to Microsoft from IBM. Read on to find out about even more about the movements.
Sheryl Sandberg: From Google to Facebook
Sheryl Sandberg has been serving as Facebook’s chief operating officer since 2008 (and is the first woman elected to its board of directors) but prior to this, she was with Google as Vice President of Global Online Sales and Operations for a good seven years. She was responsible for launching Google’s philanthropic arm, Google.org, and became heavily involved with Google Book Search. After being hired away from Google by Mark Zuckerberg in 2008, Sandberg held a pivotal role in turning Facebook into the profitable machine that it is today.
Matias Duarte: From Palm to Google
UI designer Matias Duarte was hired as VP for Human Interface and User Experience at Palm, Inc. in 2007 to lead the UI development of Palm’s webOS. He left the company shortly after it was acquired by Hewlett Packard reportedly due to some conflicts with members of his team. Rumors that he was headed to Google were quickly confirmed and soon after, it was officially announced that he would be joining the Mountain View giant as User Experience Director for Android. His design influence was first seen on Android 3.0 Honeycomb, the platform’s first push into touchscreen tablet computing.
Marissa Mayer: From Google to Yahoo
Marissa Mayer was Google’s 20th employee and was the search giant’s first female engineer. She was with the company for 13 years starting from 1999 and was able to assume various key roles such as engineer, designer, product manager, and executive. When she quit Google, she was quickly appointed as president and CEO of Yahoo, starting her stint with major changes in personnel policy such as the controversial issuing of a ban on telecommuting among employees. She is also known for leading Yahoo’s $1.1 billion acquisition of microblogging site Tumblr.
David Berman: From WebEx to RingCentral
Cloud phone systems provider RingCentral recently named former WebEx executive David Berman as its new president. He is tasked to provide leadership in the overall strategic direction of the company which is already eying an IPO. During his time at WebEx, he carried the company through its acquisition by Cisco and implemented a revolutionary web-touch sales and support model that helped the organization gain a significant growth in terms of revenue.
Ray Ozzie: From IBM Lotus to Microsoft
Prior to holding the positions of Chief Technical Officer and Chief Software Architect at Microsoft, Ray Ozzie was best known for creating Lotus Notes, the collaborative client-server software platform of IBM. After his stint at IBM, he formed Groove Networks, which was later acquired by Microsoft and evolved to become SharePoint. Heralded as one of the world’s best programmers, Ozzie stepped down from his position at Microsoft in 2010 and went on to create a secretive startup called Cocomo (recently renamed as Talko) reportedly involved in building cloud-based back end services.
Can you name more tech executives who moved to another company? Tell us in the comments section below.
