Google engineering director -- ‘He hates computers’

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Did you know that the second Monday in February is Clean Out Your Computer Day? Just don’t tell Google’s Sam Schillace.

The unsentimental engineer who built the precursor to Google Docs would rather throw an older computer in the trash than spend any time vacuuming crumbs out of the keyboard.

‘I’m not in love with my computer,’ Shillace said. ‘It’s just a tool.’

With that Spartan attitude, Schillace has built or overseen many of Google’s minimalist Web programs, including Gmail and Google Calendar.

Most notably, Schillace built Writely, a Web-based word processor that was acquired by the search giant and became Google Docs. As Google’s engineering director for communications products, he now manages several teams of developers as an engineering director.

He has a reputation around the Googleplex. A Google spokeswoman introduced him by saying, ‘He hates computers.’

You don’t say? And he’s your computer engineering director?

Schillace doesn’t care for his desktop the way some of his coder brethren do. ‘They treat it like a pet or a girlfriend,’ he said on the phone from Mountain View, Calif., recently. ‘I want it to do things for me, and when it breaks, I’ll throw it out and get another one.’

That approach governs Schillace’s aesthetic with software design too. His goal at Google is about making the computer ‘go away’ -- disappear as an obstacle between the user and the task they’re trying to perform. That includes getting Google users the information they’re looking for, fast. ‘I feel that we’re just drowning in information these days,’ Schillace said. ‘I’m not going to wade through all of that. Just show me the most interesting five minutes’ worth of stuff.’

To maintain an intuitive interaction between person and product, Schillace will keep asking his engineers to boil things down to the bare necessity. Of course, fulfilling that request sounds easier than it is.

‘Keeping things simple often is very complex for the developer,’ he said.

Some Google products have become rather busy and info-heavy. But Schillace isn’t overseeing those. Try sitting your mom in front of Google Wave or Google Reader, and see if her eyes glaze over as she reaches for the jam.

-- Mark Milian
twitter.com/markmilian