Cindy McCaffrey Leaves Google

First Key Exec To Hit Road

[Brett_Tabke]

[siliconbeat.com...]

Cindy McCaffrey, Google's vice president of corporate marketing, is leaving the technology company, the first top executive to depart after the IPO. McCaffrey has been chugging away at the P.R. business for 20 years, including gigs at Apple Computer, E*TRADE and the 3DO Company. And that's after starting a career as a journalist. She's been at Google more than five years, which means that, post-IPO, she can comfortably go off and do nothing. And that's apparently what she intends to do for now.

[Shak]

way to go I say, and congrats are in order ...

think she did a superb job

Shak

[ish]

never heard of her, but nice one :-)

[contentsiteguy]

How ironic and ingenious that Adwords idea of theirs. ;-)

[Shak]

Adwords was/is NOT her idea

not sure who should take credit, but i think part of the credit goes to the Persian crew up there

Omid Kordestani / Salar Kamangar

Shak

[walkman]

"She's been at Google more than five years, which means that, post-IPO, she can comfortably go off and do nothing"

nuf' said. Everyone's dream: to be able to do whatever you want, including nothing ;)

[shorebreak]

The credit for AdWords goes to... RealNames, who waaaaaay back in '98 did a deal with Google to distibute its 'Internet Keywords' on Google. Before then Google had no revenue model and was somewhat desperately looking for ways to monetize their business.

Then RealNames came along and proposed a BizDev relationship, giving Google its first taste of ppc revenue.

That's the truth, I was at RealNames at the time and my brother, who was working with me, did the distribution deal with Omid (his former boss from Netscape days).

RealNames doesn't get the credit it deserves, probably because it pissed away over US$100M #:^)

[Brett_Tabke]

I don't think you can under estimate the impact that her leaving will have on the company. Marketing is *everything* and she was the key architech of that plan that made Google what it is today. Look for *major* changes in Googles PR and marketing the next 12 months. hint: you won't see any more puff peices by 60 mins...

[edited by: Brett_Tabke at 12:31 pm (utc) on Jan. 4, 2005]

[Shak]

BT

with all due respect, when a company becomes as big as Google, 1 man/woman is NOT allowed to become too powerful.

as the company as a whole, even if Sergey or Larry left, NO major change would be noticed by the END user.

Shak

[top5jamaica]

yeah, i agree shak .. important and a key member she may be, but for the size that google is now, undoubtedly they can afford to find and hire more of the best of whatever positions they seek to fill

[HughMungus]

It does bring up an interesting question, though: if you're Google, where DO you go from here? How do you justify the stock price? How do you keep people interested in both using Google and investing in Google (over the long term, that is)?

[MovingOnUp]

This is sure to be the first of many. How many hundreds of their employees are multi-millionaires now?

[TrumanTiger]

>How many hundreds of their employees are multi-millionaires now?

If I remember correctly, the 60 Minutes piece said that approx. 1000 millionaires were created.

[dbowers]

1000 millionaires were created.

Wow! That's 1000 people who could almost afford the down payment on a house in the Bay Area. :)

[MovingOnUp]

That's 1000 out of about 2000 employees. That's a very significant percent.

Even if only half of them are "barely millionaires", I'm sure that there are still hundreds who are multi-millionaires and could EASILY live on the interest. $5,000,000 at 5% is $250,000 per year. You can easily find a mutual fund that returns a consistent 5% per year. $250,000 per year is more than enough to live in relative luxury in most of the US.

In this stage of Google's life, it will be very important to continue to bring in new blood, provide posh working conditions for their employees, and to find new ways to motivate multi-millionaire employees. I have no doubt that they realize this.

[peted]

If someone decides to do nothing, how do they know when they're done?

[walkman]

"If someone decides to do nothing, how do they know when they're done?"

they don't. The minute they think about it...that becomes something ;)

[TrumanTiger]

>That's 1000 out of about 2000 employees.

Mr. Brin has now said they are nearing 3000 employees. Like the 60 Minutes piece, a story on ElectricNews.net states that 1/3 of these folks are now "paper" millionaires.

[HughMungus]

This is sure to be the first of many. How many hundreds of their employees are multi-millionaires now?

The guy talking about how bad it would be for people to flaunt their wealth was chilling. When my dotcom went public, people were buying expensive cars, talking about what how they were going to spend their money, and having a good time with it. What's wrong with that? If you don't get to enjoy the fruits of your success, you don't try very hard.

[HughMungus]

it will be very important to continue to bring in new blood

Definitely. One of the things that happens is that people get "stock option paralysis". That is, they're so afraid of risking their huge stake in stock options that they stop taking chances. Take chances and you risk failure. Don't take chances and you never fail and you continue to vest and cash in every month/year.

[HughMungus]

1/3 of these folks are now "paper" millionaires

I heard 1/3 are contractors (i.e., no stock options).

[MovingOnUp]

Mr. Brin has now said they are nearing 3000 employees.

Good, so it sounds like Google is already well on the way to doing what needs to be done (bringing in new blood). I think they only had 2000 employees when the stock went public.

New blood has many other advantages, too. With new blood comes new ideas. More efficient ways of doing things. Other areas to move into. Better ways to analyze the data.

[contentsiteguy]

Adwords was/is NOT her idea
not sure who should take credit, but i think part of the credit goes to the Persian crew up there

Omid Kordestani / Salar Kamangar

Shak

I never said Adwords was her idea. I said the whole IDEA of Adwords was ironic because in the article, they talk about how she and the founders didn't believe in advertising and felt the popularity of their company should be built on word of mouth while on the other hand they decided to sell advertising to other companies.

You know, the whole "sell them the picks and shovels rather than dig for the gold yourself" kinda thing.