In early 2002, I searched for [henry massalin lock free synchronization] on Google. With the news of Jeff Dean and Sanjay Ghemawat leaving Google, I was reflecting on how that search became a pivotal moment for my life and career. Along with the results I was looking for, that search returned an ad which suggested I should apply for a job at Google.

At that point, I’d been using Google for several years and thought they did a good job, but the ad made me reach out to a former colleague who was working at Google and asked him something like “Is there still interesting work at Google? Isn’t search a solved problem?” I got a very understated response along the lines of “I think you should interview.”

The recruiter I worked with was very amused that I had seen one of the ads, which Jeff had bought on the names of a few dozen computer scientists, using free ad money that was given to employees to try out the (very new) ads system. I was apparently the only person to come through the recruiting pipeline due to Jeff’s ads. Because of that, Jeff was part of my interview panel; we talked about the representation of posting lists, something he had worked on in what was then Google’s search index. (I got to work with Jeff on a major revision of our index a few years later.)

Once I joined Google, Jeff and Sanjay, along with Georges Harik, Noam Shazeer, and the late, dearly missed Luiz Barroso, were in the next office to mine. I have never before or since had such imposter syndrome.

Needless to say, it turned out that search was not (and is not) a solved problem. I’ve spent nearly a quarter century working on it with many, many amazing colleagues. And I don’t know that I would have gotten the opportunities I did if I hadn’t seen Jeff’s ad.