Official Gmail Blog
News, tips and tricks from Google's Gmail team and friends.
Faces of Gmail: Brandon Long
August 26, 2011
Posted by Kathleen Chen, Consumer Operations
In this month’s
Faces of Gmail
we’ll introduce you to Brandon Long, a parent, ice-hockey player and science fiction fan who makes sure your emails get sent and received.
What do you do on the Gmail team?
I’m the Tech Lead Manager of the Gmail delivery team. Our team is responsible for sending and receiving email for Gmail and many other Google projects. We’re also responsible for the
IMAP
&
POP
support for Gmail, which is the most popular way to access Gmail on mobile devices.
What did you do before joining Google?
I founded Neotonic Software which wrote a web application for email customer support. Before that, I worked at eGroups, which was acquired by Yahoo! and is now Yahoo!Groups.
What’s your typical day like?
My typical day involves catching up on email from our teams in other timezones (Google Engineering never sleeps). I also stay on top of escalations from our support team, keep abreast of the running service with our SREs (Site Reliability Engineers), and make sure my team doesn’t have any blockages. Finally, I still manage to keep my hands in the codebase, working as part of the team. When I have some extra time, I take a peek in the
Gmail help forum
to see if there’s anything brewing or any help I can offer.
What do you like most about what you do?
Scale and ubiquity. Everyone knows about Gmail, many people I know use it. The volume of messages we deal with on a daily basis is pretty staggering, and it’s pretty complicated to keep the whole thing working and continuing to scale.
What are the three Gmail features you wouldn’t be able to live without?
SMTP
,
IMAP
, and
keyboard shortcuts
. I get thousands of messages a day to my work account, and keyboard shortcuts make all of the difference in handling the volume.
What’s your favorite lab?
Green Robot
. I’m an Android fan, and I like to see which of my friends are fans as well.
What do you do when you’re not working on Gmail?
I’m a father of two young children, and I play ice hockey in the local beer league.
Any favorite TV shows?
Burn Notice, The Daily Show, Top Chef, Top Gear
What’s on your reading list?
Switching to the Kindle for reading has allowed me to subscribe to magazines I gave up reading a long time ago. For example, after 15 years I’m back to reading Asimov’s Science Fiction magazine. I find it very convenient to read the short stories during my commute.
What would your last meal be?
Does one go with comfort food or with amazing? For comfort, nothing beats Chicago-style Pizza. In SF, that means Patxi’s. In Chicago, that means Lou Malnati’s or Gino’s East. For amazing, I’m not a foodie myself, but I have enough foodie friends to have been introduced to some meals both amazing and ridiculous. And besides, if it’s going to be my last meal, why not a 25 course gastronomic event taking six hours or more? The last place we tried was e by José Andrés, and it was fabulous.
Photos by
Cody Bratt
, Google Talk team
Labels
buzz
calendar
Gmail Blog
Google Apps Blog
Google Calendar
googlenew
Inbox
Inbox by Gmail
labs
mobile
Offline
reader
tasks
tip
Archive
2016
Sep
Aug
Apr
Mar
Feb
Jan
2015
Dec
Nov
Oct
Sep
Jul
Jun
May
Apr
Mar
Feb
Jan
2014
Dec
Nov
Oct
Aug
Jul
Apr
Mar
Feb
Jan
2013
Dec
Nov
Oct
Sep
Jul
Jun
May
Apr
Mar
2012
Dec
Nov
Oct
Sep
Aug
Jul
Jun
May
Apr
Mar
Feb
Jan
2011
Dec
Nov
Oct
Sep
Aug
Jul
Jun
May
Apr
Mar
Feb
Jan
2010
Dec
Nov
Oct
Sep
Aug
Jul
Jun
May
Apr
Mar
Feb
Jan
2009
Dec
Nov
Oct
Sep
Aug
Jul
Jun
May
Apr
Mar
Feb
Jan
2008
Dec
Nov
Oct
Sep
Aug
Jul
Jun
May
Apr
Mar
Feb
Jan
2007
Dec
Nov
Oct
Sep
Aug
Jul
Feed
Google
on
Follow @gmail
Follow
Give us feedback in our
Product Forum
.
Get posts via email
Email:
Powered by
Google Groups
Useful Links
About Gmail
Gmail for Mobile
Gmail for Work
Follow