Google’s Jim Miller Awes Anderson Audience with His Company’s Mind-Boggling Immensity

By Carolyn Gray Anderson

Anderson’s Easton Technology Leadership Program and High Tech Business Association jointly sponsored guest speaker Jim Miller, vice president of worldwide operations at Google. More than 250 people turned out for Miller’s talk, which addressed the diversity of Google’s supply chain and its operational breadth.

The big takeaway? Google is immense. Its in-house data center dwarfs the scale of entire tech companies. One student remarked, “The scope and vertical integration at Google [is] mind-blowing. Jim Miller was inspirational in his vision and expertise, yet down-to-earth. I valued hearing his perspective about his company and his position there.”

Miller has responsibility for global operations, planning, supply chain and new product introduction for Google’s IT infrastructure and Google Fiber, the new fiber-to-the-premises service in the United States that provides broadband Internet and cable television to an increasing number of locations. Miller also runs Google Energy LLC and is actively engaged with Google’s efforts in the area of computation genomics and biology as the executive sponsor.

Miller joined Google in 2010 when Google was still best known for its search engine. The Android platform was emerging in the mobile space and the Chrome browser was quickly being adopted. With an aeronautical engineering degree from Purdue, a master’s degree in mechanical engineering from MIT and a master’s in management from the Sloan School of Management at MIT, Miller has held a variety of leadership roles in operations and supply chain management throughout his career.

Google's Jim Miller (center) with Associate Professor Guillaume Roels and Easton's Vandana Mangal.

The audience was uniformly impressed with the extent to which Miller revealed “esoteric” information about Google they didn’t know, like its competition with Amazon Web Services, the company’s self-identity as a “Stanford that makes money,” and the range of industries Google is involved with, including robotics and the energy sector. Audience members evaluated the presentation as “fascinating” and “relatable.” “I thoroughly enjoyed Mr. Miller’s thoughts on the importance of thinking big,” reported one attendee. “He did an excellent job of presenting Google as involved in many things, while underscoring Google’s ardor for academics.”

Easton Executive Director Vandana Mangal was particularly impressed by Miller’s receptiveness to students’ questions. “When asked about MBA students who don’t have a technical degree and how they can get to0 a leadership role like Jim in a tech company,” she noted, “he said that Google looks for passion in people from all backgrounds and there is the need for MBAs to help scale the business.”

Easton will post a video recording of Jim Miller's talk the week of April 27 on its Leadership Style series Web page.

Comments

[Vandana Mangal]

Thank you Jarrett Fein ('16) for the question on MBAs in tech companies.