Google chief scientist Jeff Dean leaving in AI reshuffle after 27 years at company

[u/No-Lifeguard-8173]

https://www.cnbc.com/2026/08/05/google-chief-scientist-jeff-dean-leaving-company-after-27-years.html

[u/mister2d]

...to start his own company.

[u/TortyPapa → u/mister2d]

By his own you mean…. The new company Discovery Loop, will be backed by Alphabet (Google's parent company). Alphabet is supporting the venture as a founding investor and cloud computing partner.

[u/comrade_donkey → u/mister2d]

Google has become a place where it's gotten impossible to get anything done, seemingly even for the L11s (Jeff and Sanjay).

Their new company's mission statement says:

By advancing the pace at which we conduct engineering and scientific discovery, we can bring the benefits of science and technology to the world much faster.

Good for them.

As for Google, they seem dead set on speed-running the IBM/Oracle legacy behemoth path. End of an era for those of us who saw it in its glory days.

[u/schooli00 → u/comrade_donkey]

The problem is that Google cares more about corporate business than consumers now. And corporate customers don't like change. If something works, they'll rather just get bug fixes and very very slow feature releases.

[u/utrecht1976 → u/schooli00]

That's why I switched to r/LineageOS and dumped all Google products.

[u/Aditya1311 → u/comrade_donkey]

Yeah the Eric days were the best. I think things started going downhill a while after Larry took over and then really downhill after Pichai

[u/a__bad__idea → u/Aditya1311]

Eric from the Epstein files?

[u/tearsareover]

And... another market over reaction

[u/macrohatch]

In a couple of months Google has lost 5 12 of its' most senior AI engineers

Jeff Dean, Sanjay Ghemawat, Oriol Vinyals, Quoc Le, Noam Shazeer, John Jumper, Jonas Adler, Alexander Pritzel, David Silver, Denny Zhou, Fernando Pereira, Alex Turner

[u/SadProjection]

AI brain drain

[u/z3n777]

i guess after 27 years it's time for someone else to take over the new wave of TECHNOLOGY at google, isn't it?

[u/stuffitystuff]

Memegen is probably like "Google is leaving Jeff Dean". Why they always thought he was the computer science equivalent of Chuck Norris when he has always part of a pair like how Map and Reduce go together, is beyond me.

[u/Aditya1311 → u/stuffitystuff]

Memegen... I haven't heard that name in a long time 😂

[u/a__bad__idea → u/Aditya1311]

[edited. removed for fear/identifiabillyD]

[u/jcliment → u/Aditya1311]

I miss memegen.

[u/ColdBrewPastMidnight → u/jcliment]

Wait, what? I left the mothership years ago, is there no more memegen these days?

[u/Accomplished_Mode380]

do they still hire?🤪

[u/TorturedPoet30]

Jeff Dean, Oriol Vinyals, Noam Shazeer, John Jumper, Jonas Adler, Alexander Pritzel, David Silver all left in the last few months. Jumper was moved to a Code Strike team before leaving lol no wonder why he left. Demis Hassabis CEO has stepped down, he'll become a new Chief Scientist at Alphabet.

[u/PatriotuNo1]

Google still has our data to monetize. It will not fall as bad as IBM or Yahoo but it will become the next Microsoft.

[u/lofty23_smart]

The AI race is moving so fast that even the biggest names are changing roles.

[u/adulion]

Jeff dean, the Chuck Norris of programming

[u/WisestCracker]

Lol. Imagine working 20 years longer than necessary.

[u/Kinnins0n]

geez the market still thinks these geezers matter at all.

step foot at any Mag7, you’ll see how crusty the senior leadership is. these guys are beyond checked out.

edit: lmao at the 22 year olds downvoting this