Ben Collins-Sussman : Biographies

Short version

Ben started his tech career as a software engineer and was a founding developer of the Subversion version control system. In 2005 he co-founded the Google Chicago engineering office, helped it grow to its current size of 1700+ employees with 400+ engineers, and has been the Engineering Site Lead since 2014. At Google, he spent six years as a manager in developer tools, four years in Ads, and the last six years in Search. Ben has also co-authored a book ("Debugging Teams") on how to build and lead high-functioning engineering teams, centered around the principles of humility, trust, and respect.

Long Version

Ben Collins-Sussman is the current engineering Site Lead for Google's Chicago office. A founding developer of the Subversion version control system, he co-authored O'Reilly's "Version Control with Subversion" book as well as the engineering management book "Debugging Teams". Since joining Google in 2005, he ported Subversion to Google's Bigtable platform, led engineering teams for Google Code, the Google Affiliate Network, Google Ad Manager, and now multiple teams for Google Search.

Ben (wikipedia page) collects hobbies which explore the tension between art and science. He's written extensively about the social challenges of software development; he's written interactive fiction games and tools and was the co-winner of two different independent game competitions; he's also co-authored several original musicals and shared multiple awards for theater composition across the country. Ben has an Extra-class FCC license for amateur radio, enjoys doing film and darkroom photography, singing in barbershop quartets, sketching with ink and watercolor, and playing bluegrass banjo.

Ben is a lifetime native of Chicago; he holds a Bachelor of Science degree from the University of Chicago with a major in Mathematics and minor in Linguistics. He still lives in Chicago with his wife, kids, and cats.