The Manager Who Changed My Life

I graduated college in June of 2001, with a degree in Computer Science just as the first wave of Internet companies were collapsing. Having been an intern at Yahoo! for the past three summers and having spent a semester working there full time, I didn’t spend a lot of time worrying about my grades: I knew I had a job waiting for me. But after October of 2000, things started getting hairy. Many of my friends at school had their offers rescinded. I started getting nervous, because my grades were terrible, and if I lost that job, I might be in real trouble.

I received a call just after graduation from the man who had been my boss for the past couple summers at Yahoo!, a guy who I admired — I should say I practically worshipped him. He was the best engineer I’d ever worked with and an amazing manager (an example: one Monday I came in to work early to find that this guy, who was simultaneously running a significantly sized engineering team, had built and launched a new Yahoo! product over the weekend, by himself). On the phone, he told me that he was FedEx-ing me my employment agreement, and that I should sign it, overnight it back, and have it back on his desk by Wednesday. I didn’t ask questions, I just did what he told me to do. I figured he had his reasons.

On Thursday, Yahoo! announced major layoffs and a hiring freeze.

I remember that moment when I read about the freeze as one of the pivotal ones of my life, one of those moments where if things had gone a different way, my entire path would have changed. I remember feeling chills run down my spine as I realized how close I had come to being out of work, with no experience, in one of the worst downturns the tech industry had ever seen. That manager basically saved my career. He saw potential in me, and he went out of his way to make sure that potential was realized. Aside from everything he taught me about building software in the years to come, I learned a valuable lesson from him that day about how to think about my career and my life, and what kind of leader I wanted to be.

His name was Venkat Panchapakesan, and he passed away yesterday at 49 after a battle with cancer.

Venkat’s natural talent for engineering and his way with people — his fierce loyalty, his warmth, his thoughtfulness — served him well after we parted ways at Yahoo!. I joined the search team where I went on to architect a number of successful platforms, but Venkat, a rising star, continued to expand his sphere of influence and make a larger and larger impact until he moved on to be an EIR at Greylock and eventually a VP of Engineering at Google (where he eventually was responsible for all of engineering at YouTube). We lost touch a bit when Venkat moved to India to run a division in Bangalore, and I’m ashamed to say the news of his passing was a complete shock to me: I didn’t even know he was sick. But I know he was keeping tabs on me, that’s the kind of guy he was. A friend of mine recently had his company acquired by Google, and Venkat was their executive sponsor: my friend told me that in conversations with him it became clear that he had been following everything I was doing and talked about my success with pride and affection.

I thanked him many times over the years for the various lessons he taught me, and I think — I hope — he knew how appreciative I was. I am going to miss him greatly, as will many others whose lives he touched the way he touched mine. It was too soon for him, and my heart goes out to his wife and his two kids.

Now I’m going to go code up something awesome, and teach one of the junior developers on my team something useful, because that’s what he would have wanted. Thanks Ven.