Its not at all essential that he has to be a good programmer or for that matter, a subject matter expert in programming to reach the leadership position. Technical expertise or brilliance and leadership excellence could be two different things altogether.
All along he has been a product management genius. His understanding of product development, product placement, future needs, market requirements, future trends, partnership, and team building make him a spearhead corporate leader. Pichai was front-and-center in the company’s rivalry with Apple and Microsoft. He has a clear understanding of the market, driving product innovations, and revenue generation. Under his leadership, Google is continuously evolving and keeping it ahead of the competition. One Googler on Quora wrote, "He is literally worshipped in..Google. Engineers love him. Product Managers love him. Business people love him."
“He recruited, mentored, and retained a great team,” said former Google product manager Chris Beckmann. “Sundar’s team of product managers had a reputation as being among the best of the best, similar to the reputation of the software engineers within Search Quality.” in spite of his meteoric rise, he's remained incredibly humble and grounded - "It is always good to work with people who make you feel insecure about yourself. That way, you will constantly keep pushing your limits," Pichai said in 2015
He himself has become a kind of brand, a hot property for tech giants. He has become an asset for Google, his becoming the CEO was an eventual step to retain him, but they didn’t want to let him go.
Pichai did his MS from Stanford, and MBA from the University of Pennsylvania's Wharton School and had stints at Applied Materials and consulting firm McKinsey & Co. Pichai earned his engineering degree in metallurgy from the Indian Institute of Technology Kharagpur and his success won him a scholarship from Stanford University.
Sundar Pichai, the CEO of Alphabet, Google's parent company is now one of the world's highest-paid executives after he was awarded a whopping $281 million in total compensation in 2019. Pichai, who is also the CEO of Google, became the CEO of Alphabet, Larry Page and Sergey Brin announced last December that they were stepping down from their leadership position in the company. Pichai has been at Google since 2004, rising through the rank to become CEO in 2015 and eventually leading the entire company. Pichai was inducted into Alphabet’s board as a director.
The Internet Explorer debacle led to another big early achievement of Pichai, he convinced cofounders Larry Page and Sergey Brin to make Google build its own browser. And today Google Chrome is the most used option out there. His far sight and success with Chrome, App, and Android made him the most deserving promotion in 2014 to be the 2nd in command being in charge of almost all the products like map, search engine, Google Plus, Add, Commercial as well the infrastructure. He has been particularly focused on the company’s cash cow - Search and keep it strong. He is said to be instrumental in Google's $3.2 billion acquisition of Nest in 2014.
Pichai made his start, by working on Google's search toolbar. But in 2006, Microsoft came up with a counter strategy by making Bing the new default search engine on Internet Explorer. However, Pichai could manage to convince computer manufacturers to preinstall the Toolbar on their hardware to ward off the challenge.
Anjali & Sundar Piachai in their younger days
He married his long-time girlfriend Anjali. They are happily married and blessed with a son, Kiran, and a daughter, Kavya. They met in their engineering days, became good friends, and gradually fell in love. After doing his engineering Sundar moved to the US for further studies while Anjali stayed back in India. There was a time when they couldn’t speak to each other for six long months as Sundar couldn’t afford to pay for international calls..
He remained loyal to Google all these long years, in spite of having been offered high ranking profiles by Yahoo &Twitter
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