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After a nearly 10-month search, Google finally found a new chief financial officer — and Patrick Pichette found a way to reinvent himself after seven years at BCE. The 46-year-old Canadian telco veteran, and McKinsey and CallNet alumnus, joined the search sovereign Aug. 1. Taking over the finances of an unconventional Internet company, with a market cap of about US$140 billion and nearly US$13 billion in cash and short-term investments, has some pressures. But as he told Andrew Wahl in advance of his first quarterly earnings report expected in early October, it’s nothing compared to running Canadian telecommunications infrastructure.
How’s life in Silicon Valley?
Every day, I get up and look at the sky and it’s slightly cloudy at 8 a.m, and by 11 a.m., it’s sunny and 80 degrees. Every day. So I am adapting pretty well, thank you.
How did you decide to take the job?
It’s just flattering. You know, you come home at night and tell your wife, “I’ve been offered to go and have coffee with Google in California.” And remember last winter we had 16 feet of snow in Montreal? Google’s an international company, truly an innovator, and unique, so obviously you go and have the coffee. I was being heavily headhunted for a number of other positions across the world, and I had told everybody else, “Go away.” I was hoping, in fact, to take a break for my wife and my family. I made one exception.
Your seven years at BCE spanned tumultuous times for that company. What were the greatest lessons?
What a great time. I joined right at the top, just before the Internet bubble cratered, and I was really instrumental in leading the restructuring of Teleglobe. And then, right after the bubble, when everybody was pulling back, we had to make the strategic call at Bell to double-down on DSL and broadband technologies, and I think if Bell had waited, it would have missed a huge opportunity that now it’s capitalizing on. BCE was a good school to me to see how you shape an industry by being proactive rather than reactive.What do you regard as your greatest achievement at Bell?
Converting the operations of Bell into adopting, essentially, the principles of the Toyota manufacturing system. We really made a huge turnaround in the last half-decade at Bell, and you see it in the “Same Day Next Day” service [announced Sept. 10]. That’s the product of spending four years resetting the entire production chain at Bell Canada. Think of the formidable changes required to make that happen in a place with 40,000 employees. It takes time; it’s an aircraft carrier.
What has the transition from Bell Canada’s corporate culture to Google’s been like?
Incredibly easy. There are a couple of saings at Google, like “You don’t have to wear a suit to be serious.” Today I’m wearing jeans, I bike to and from work an hour every day and I drop my daughter at school. And when you get to Google, everybody is really smart, everybody contributes equally and you don’t have to be at your desk to answer a question. I come into Google, I’m at home. In that sense, it’s very refreshing, because it’s effortless. It’s probably the single biggest reason why I joined the company. I’m not at Google for money, I’m looking for fit, because if you’re going to spend a decade building a place with people, you want to whistle to work.
Did you feel stifled at Bell?
When you work at Bell Canada, it’s a different value proposition. When my stuff did not work well at Bell, the planes of Canada were all grounded, the borders would close, and that night, if that server didn’t go back up, the Bank of Canada doesn’t clear that day. You really are running Canada’s infrastructure at Bell. Here, we’ve got a bit more leeway because there’s so much innovation. Everybody is going to expect the occasional “oops” at Google, because we’re fast prototyping, we’re always changing.
What are your top priorities as Google’s CFO?
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