About

Hi, I’m Jeff. This is my (mostly) professional website.

Selfie of Jeff on his first day at Google NYC, on the terrace with the Freedom Tower in the background
First day at Google NYC, on the terrace with the Freedom Tower in the background

I work at Google Cloud, in the Office of the CTO. (OCTO). What is the OCTO? Well if you didn’t read that post, here’s another more recent one to get a feel for it. We are extended tech leadership advisors for customers, work closely with product/engineering, and do some thought leadership stuff.

I focus on Applied AI, helping CIOs & CTOs utilize machine learning and artificial intelligence. This includes all of the supporting data infrastructure, like data warehouses, data engineering, and data pipelines. It also covers cultural aspects such as promoting data-driven organizations, setting up data science teams, and empowering people to “go beyond spreadsheets“. I’m also exploring how technology can support sustainability, (also called ESG for Environmental, Social, and Governance), both in terms of reducing impact of cloud computing and in building solutions to combat climate change and promote social good.

I started programming professionally with AppleScript, which is probably kind of weird, but it made sense at the time. I went from there to SQL and wrote tons of database code for years, mostly within fin-tech and financial services companies like Capital IQ (now S&P Global Market Intelligence) and Blackstone, where I helped established data science teams. You can read more about my path to AI if you like. I also did some startups (which, ahem, did not “work” but were great learning experiences), and even led technology at the New York Observer along the way.

I code as much as I can — though this varies over time depending on what I’m working on. I’m a believer in engineering managers who code, and even CTOs who code, because I’ve been doing it that way for a long time. I think it works for me. Recently I have mostly coded in Python, and I’m all about cloud, of course.

It should go without saying, but the opinions stated here are my own, not those of my company (or previous companies, or other organizations I may be connected to).

You can find me on Twitter, LinkedIn, GitHub, Medium, and Quora.