In November of 2002, while we were in talks with Google about being aquired, and Bryan was going to work full-time at Adaptive Path, and, therefore, not going to be able to work at Pyra/Blogger anymore, Jason Sutter recommended his friend to fill the part-time, temporary position of keeping the books and various things that I was bad at paying attention to.Even though his name was Jason and we already had not one but two other Jasons (out of five people), I agreed to hire him because Bryan liked him and, after all, we were only offering him a four-month job, because we were in these talks, and I couldn't guarantee (nor assume) that Google, if we did sell to them, would want him.
Lo and behold, we did, and they did (probably because he was the only one on the team with an Ivy League education). Jason (the third one) became increasingly important to Blogger once we got to Google, sharing much of the product and engineering management with me. And when I got ready to leave Google, it was mostly because of Jason that I felt comfortable doing so. I knew that he would run the ship with alacrity and skill.
In fact, with very little fanfare, virtually no external recognition, and limited corporate resources, Jason has guided Blogger through huge growth, making it one of Google's—and the web's—top properties.
(The early '05 jump is when Alexa merged blogspot.com and blogger.com, because they're actually the same service—but still, it's grown.)
And so it is with pride and happiness that I wish Jason the best as, at the end of this week, he ceases his daily commute to Mountain View and moves on from Google and Blogger to the as-yet-unknown. I've never lucked out so much on an employee that I paid so little attention to hiring.