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Forget Larry and Sergey: At the Googleplex in Mountain View, California, the real celebrity engineer is Jeff Dean.
Consider this story Googler Heej Jones told on Quora:
"Before my first day at Google, a mutual friend introduced [me to Jeff] over email. So during my first week, I pinged him to grab lunch.
At the time, I had no idea who he was or anything about his stature at Google. I did notice during that first lunch, however, that people were staring at him from several tables over, while others would whisper something as they passed by our table.
As I began to cultivate more engineer friends, I came to know more about his "legend"; one such friend once exclaimed, "You had lunch with Jeff Dean?!"
Dean is such a star because Googlers widely credit his code for the blazing speed of Google search.
How deep does this adoration go?
You know those Chuck Norris jokes called "Chuck Norris Facts"?
Like: "Chuck Norris doesn't wash dishes, they wet themselves out of fear" or "Chuck Norris is not allowed on commercial flights because his fists are considered deadly weapons"?
Well, over on Quora, there's a bunch of "Jeff Dean Facts," written by Googlers and ex-Googlers who love their hero.
They're pretty funny – if you understand software engineers and their sense of humor.
Because we don't always, we asked Business Insider chief architect, Pax Dickinson, to help translate the jokes for the rest of us.
Compilers don’t warn Jeff Dean. Jeff Dean warns compilers.
Pax: "Compilers warn you when your code is doing something that isn't an error but might not be correct. Jeff knows better than the compiler."
Jeff Dean builds his code before committing it, but only to check for compiler and linker bugs.
Pax: "Jeff's code can never be wrong, so he compiles it only to ensure that the compiler and linker are free from bugs."
Jeff Dean puts his pants on one leg at a time, but if he had more legs, you would see that his approach is O(log n).
Pax: "Jeff's pants-wearing algorithm scales logarithmically rather than linearly, so he'd spend less time dressing per leg the more legs he had."
When he heard that Jeff Dean's autobiography would be exclusive to the platform, Richard Stallman bought a Kindle.
Pax: "Richard Stallman is famously rabidly against any non-free software, and would never ever purchase or use a Kindle. But Jeff Dean is so interesting, he'd violate all his principles [to read his autobiography]."
Jeff Dean writes directly in binary. He then writes the source code as a documentation for other developers.
Pax: "All code is [electronically] compiled into a binary representation before it's executed, and Jeff is so good he can code directly to that representation, and only writes source code so mere human programmers can understand how it works."
During his own Google interview, Jeff Dean was asked the implications if P=NP were true. He said, "P = 0 or N = 1." Then, before the interviewer had even finished laughing, Jeff examined Google’s public certificate and wrote the private key on the whiteboard.
Pax: "P vs. NP is the most famous unsolved problem in computer science, but Jeff treats it as a straight up algebra problem. Then he derives google's private key from their public certificate in his head, which is impossible even for a supercomputer."
The x86-64 spec includes several undocumented instructions marked 'private use.' They are actually for Jeff Dean's use.
Pax: "Private undocumented CPU instructions aren't supposed to be used by anyone, but these rules don't apply to Jeff."
When Jeff Dean has an ergonomic evaluation, it is for the protection of his keyboard.
Pax: "Usually ergonomic evaluation corrects your posture for your health, but Jeff's is for his keyboard's health because he's so badass."
All pointers point to Jeff Dean.
Pax: "Pointers are C variables that point to a memory location, they're a core element of C coding. Jeff is the center of the programming universe."
The rate at which Jeff Dean produces code jumped by a factor of 40 in late 2000 when he upgraded his keyboard to USB 2.0
Pax: Dean's coding was slowed down by the speed of the interface between his keyboard and his computer.
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Nicholas Carlson was Business Insider's global editor-in-chief from 2017 to 2024, overseeing its emergence as a National Magazine Award, Emmy, SABEW, and Pulitzer Prize-winning global news organization with more than 500 journalists reaching 200 million readers and viewers each month.Before that, he was Business Insider's chief correspondent.Carlson is also the author of "Marissa Mayer and the Fight To Save Yahoo!"He was an Executive Producer of "Quiet on Set: The Dark Side of Kids TV," which, during its debut week, was the most-watched television show on any streamer and the most-watched show in Max history.His investigative reporting rewrote the histories of Facebook, Twitter, and Groupon. He also wrote the award-winning features "The Truth About Marissa Mayer: An Unauthorized Biography" and "THE COST OF WINNING: Tim Armstrong, Patch, And The Struggle To Save AOL."Longform.org named "THE COST OF WINNING" the best long-form business story of 2013.Carlson's coverage of Yahoo won Digiday's award for Best Editorial Achievement of the year in 2014.In 2015 Carlson wrote a New York Times Magazine cover story, "What Happened When Marissa Mayer Tried to Be Steve Jobs." It was a finalist for a Mirror Award for best in-depth/enterprise reporting.Carlson began his journalism career at InternetNews.com and then Gawker Media's Valleywag. He went to Davidson College. Disclosure: Nicholas is an investor in private and public companies and adheres to Insider Inc's Conflict of Interest policy, which you can read here.