
Sergey Brin’s Resume (1996) - eniz
http://infolab.stanford.edu/~sergey/resume.html
======
neilv
Earlier in dotcoms, I dug up his old email address this way, for a reason that
seemed important at the time...

Some Google megacorp faceless bureaucracy combat drones (that was their
initial approach) were trying to force me to give up a domain name, and
implying they would take legal action and "prevail". I couldn't afford a
lawyer, and I had better things to do with my time, but...

I wasn't yet using the domain name, and probably would've let it expire if
they'd never contacted me, but their heavy-handedness raised a moral concern.
At the time, Google was considered good, and clearly it was very important to
humanity at the time that Google be good and stay good.

The whole "don't be evil" seemed to come from recognizing that Google would
likely be very powerful (this was pretty clear earlier, as soon as you used
their prototype, and realized it was not only better than everything else, but
that they were more competent than almost all other dotcommers). They were
declaring upfront that they took the responsibility seriously, and wouldn't
abuse their position. And there was some early evidence that they believed in
that (such as in objectivity of rankings, and being very clear about what was
sponsored messages and not).

The domain name in question had been intended for a social commentary parody,
of some social media manipulation behavior that had just started to emerge on
a lesser Google property. I told the threatening lawyer-types that. I also
pointed out that the domain name obviously would never be mistaken for a
Google brand, and that I'm pretty sure that the bit of intentional similarity
to one of their brands would be considered protected use in the US.

When they still wouldn't back off -- and since I couldn't afford a lawyer to
argue the points, but I was concerned -- I looked for the founders' old email
addresses, and used Brin's (IIRC) to initiate a domain name transfer to him.
Then I told the lawyer-types (and a PR contact there) something like, if they
wanted the domain name, they'd have to talk to him about it, and maybe have a
"don't be evil" discussion. IIRC, they said they'd wait for the domain to
expire.

~~~
armitron
This is certainly ironic given how Google is positioning itself to become one
of the most evil corporations in the history of the planet. Will it get there?
I hope not but things are not looking positive.

~~~
sprafa
Most evil corporations in history? Really? I mean they have nothing on the
British East Indian Company, which took over and ruled over India as a private
enterprises.

------
pitchups
The most interesting part of this resume is hidden though. Click view source
to see it..

    
    
      <!--<H4>Objective:</H4>
      A large office, good pay, and very little work.
      Frequent expense-account trips to exotic lands would be a plus.-->

~~~
miles
Great find!

Another hidden comment on that page of historical interest:

<!-- <IMG ALIGN=LEFT SRC="pics/diamond.gif"> <H4><A HREF="/cgi-
bin/sergey/HyperNews/get/forums/datamine.html">Data Mining</A></H4> I have
recently acquired an interest in data mining and started up a meeting
group.<P>\-->

EDIT: While looking for more information on the data mining link, stumbled
onto a 2015 HN thread[0] in which the same two hidden comments were cited by
two different users[1].

[0]
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9055516](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9055516)

[1]
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9055582](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9055582)

------
dang
2016:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12561966](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12561966)

2015:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9055516](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9055516)

2014:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7448568](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7448568)

2010:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1158718](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1158718)

------
rahuldottech
Hah, gotta love that animated photo:
[http://infolab.stanford.edu/~sergey/](http://infolab.stanford.edu/~sergey/)

------
kevinconroy
Clicking around, the last class he taught was with another student... Larry
Page.

[http://infolab.stanford.edu/~sergey/349/](http://infolab.stanford.edu/~sergey/349/)

------
lqet
> _World Wide Web_

> Research on the Web seems to be fashionable these days and I guess I'm no
> exception. Recently I have been working on the Google search engine with
> Larry Page.

[http://infolab.stanford.edu/~sergey/](http://infolab.stanford.edu/~sergey/)

------
jnwatson
Brin was on the Python train early. At the time, Guido van Rossum worked in
Reston, VA, only about 30 miles away.

~~~
zawerf
I feel like Google created the "Python train" to begin with. Maybe in an
alternate universe Brin could've picked another random obscure language and it
would become the most popular language today. It would be endorsed by one of
the most successful company in the world who can pour resources into
developing it, hire their BDFL, etc.

~~~
pmiller2
I see this claim repeated often. It seems logical enough, but is there any
real evidence for it?

~~~
jsjohnst
Not sure if this is entirely equivalent, but couldn’t the same be said for PHP
with Yahoo/FB?

------
laxatives
I had no idea Wolfram was older than Google

~~~
vondur
Oh yeah. I believe a version of Mathematica was included with the original
NeXt workstations back in the early 90s.

------
azangru
> It is unique in that it is in written mostly TeX

And they say, always proofread your resumes! :-)

~~~
jrockway
He didn't proofread his resume and is rich beyond our wildest imagination.
Maybe this actually counters your argument.

~~~
mhh__
Walk the walk, but luck is a cruel mistress

------
sandino
"Too academic... during the phone screening he kept going on about non-
euclidean geometries and eigenvectors and stuff. His C++ skills look pretty
good, but we need someone with strong skills in Oracle, Visual Basic and
ClearCase ... and with at least 5-10 years of industry experience."

------
xeromal
Here's his little bro's geocities

[https://web.archive.org/web/19990129053912/http://www.geocit...](https://web.archive.org/web/19990129053912/http://www.geocities.com/Colosseum/9535/)

I'm bloo if I was green I would die

------
p1esk
It seems that as a college freshman he was already a competent programmer.

~~~
jnwatson
That was not uncommon back in those days. Personal computers in particular
were a relatively small niche. Given the limitations of application and
difficulty to use, a much higher proportion of those who could use a computer
could also program one.

Most of my computer friends and I were decent programmers by the time we
entered college in the early 90's.

~~~
nicoburns
It must be fairly common even now for people doing CS degrees, right? I didn't
do CS, but I'd been programming for 5 years by the time I started college (I
partly didn't study CS _because_ I already knew how to program to a reasonable
standard...)

~~~
laxatives
Back in my day, almost exactly 10 years ago, relatively few college freshman
had significant experience coding, beyond understanding basic syntax (probably
<10%). Most of the most blatantly experienced coders were bored for the first
couple months and dropped the course/school to make heaps of money, not
realizing understanding syntax is like 2% of Computer Science. So the people
most vocal about how easy the coursework was were at a significant
disadvantage in the long run.

~~~
doitLP
But it just goes to show that that 2% is all you needed to make heaps of money
;)

~~~
laxatives
I mean heaps of money is relative to a college student fresh out of high
school. Everyone I personally know who went that route seriously regrets it
and hit a glass ceiling within 3 years of working. Their careers tanked before
the rest of us even got started.

------
kjhdf89unl
It does show that your parents involvement in your teaching plays a part, as
does being in the right place at the right time and culture of the country you
reside in. I'm not knocking his own effort either. When you look at the
developments and achievements coming from the US, you have to wonder why does
the rest of the world get it so wrong?

~~~
Aeolun
I think in the US, it’s either really great, or fairly sucky to live.

In the rest (of the western world), it’s just always meh. They’re optimizing
for different things.

The US as a country is also just bigger, so it will have more successes in
absolute terms than other smaller countries. The same thing is happening in
China now and India will soon follow.

------
ruang
Would be interesting to know which subset of math he thought was most useful.
There is just too much to learn.

------
jrib
I'd be curious to see what his "Movie Ratings" project mentioned there was
like at that time

~~~
rurban
Something like movielens, a project they eventually bought.

You do a simple k-means calculation of your friends or closest matches (if you
have clustering or svm, I guess he didn't have) and then get predictions for
free. Something like the Netflix recommender system, just very primitive.

------
DrAwdeOccarim
Go Terps!

------
hogFeast
Leg up from dad. He even got work experience in the actual department in which
his father worked...which surely wouldn't happen today.

...but this is kind of a Google thing. Page was the same (and somehow still
didn't know how to code Backrub despite having a BSc and MSc in comp sci and
the link idea came from Robin Li...made quite a career out of claiming the
genius of other people as your own).

~~~
peteretep
Many millions of people have this level of privilege worldwide, but very few
have founded Google-sized companies. Acknowledging the distorting effect of
privilege is important, but this seems like you’re throwing out the baby with
the bath water here.

~~~
mehrdada
You kind of prove the parent's point though. Given a large enough sample size
of all the people with privilege, it is conceivable to imagine that Google-
sized success would happen to someone in that group at random, and other
explanations could be simply overfitting to the data.

(Not saying this matches my personal worldview, but just analyzing the
commentary)

~~~
peteretep
> Given a large enough sample size of all the people with privilege, it is
> conceivable to imagine that Google-sized success would happen to someone in
> that group at random, and other explanations could be simply overfitting to
> the data.

This is true of all groups, though, so doesn't give us any information.

~~~
ulisesrmzroche
Enough information to hero worship, apparently.

