I met and worked with Bob in open source work in the mid 2000's, mostly with what would become Guice. He wrote this framework, again, thanks to his distaste of Spring and we put an early version of it what would become Apache Struts 2. Man, if I ever got cocky in my programming skills, I just needed to read that Guice prototype code and I was quickly humbled. The best part is he was just an awesome guy to be around. Very friendly, accepting, humble, and a ton of fun. I still talk about this guy I know who was married on the bridge of the Star Trek Enterprise 1701 D (at the MGM before it was torn down)...
Remembering Bob Lee
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Re: Remembering Bob Lee
#72The anecdote I always share about my 2013 internship at Square involves Bob. It took place during the quarterly Hack Week, when the company allowed everyone to take a break from work and build whatever they liked. Cash App (known as "Square Cash" back then) had just been launched, and the only way to send money was by emailing someone with a dollar amount in the subject line and cc'ing cash@square.com. My fellow inte…
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Re: Remembering Bob Lee
#73I knew CrazyBob for over 20 years. We met at JavaOne and at the time he was still a consultant living in St Louis. Bob was always the life of the party with a grin like a Cheshire cat. Eventually he got a great job at Google working on the core APIs for Android and created the very lightweight Guice dependency injection framework. We shared a distaste for both Spring and J2EE by that point. At Square he started the C…
I was trying to find that blog post by Cedric. Thanks Sam for linking it.
Bob Lee, RIP.
Re: Remembering Bob Lee
#74Earlier quoted context omitted.
According to footnote 121 in Chet Haase's book 'Androids' Bob had used this nickname since highschool and even used it as his corporate email address. Does not answer where it originally came from, but he seems to have enjoyed the nickname.
I read that it originated from his waterpolo days.
That actually makes a lot of sense.
Re: Remembering Bob Lee
#75The anecdote I always share about my 2013 internship at Square involves Bob. It took place during the quarterly Hack Week, when the company allowed everyone to take a break from work and build whatever they liked. Cash App (known as "Square Cash" back then) had just been launched, and the only way to send money was by emailing someone with a dollar amount in the subject line and cc'ing cash@square.com. My fellow inte…
Love this story. This was how I remember him too; I didn't know he was our CTO until after a long conversation with him about some technical minutiae.
Re: Remembering Bob Lee
#76This is Joshua Goldbard, Founder of MobileCoin
I had the distinct pleasure of working with Bob daily for the last few years. Bob was an incredible human being who I will miss every day. He was my friend and someone who drank deeply from the cup of life. He had a way of seeing the world that was enchanting. He was a visionary in so many ways.
Bob led product for our team for years but that's probably the least interesting thing on his resume. He was the one of the early creators of Android, founding CTO at Square, and the inventor of CashApp. To be honest, none of his tech accomplishments compare to the person that he was.
Everywhere Bob went he made friends. He did this by being a person who brought people together. He was loved far and wide because of his ability to build community.
I will close with this: Bob joined MobileCoin because he believed in a future where we have protections from predatory corporations and criminals. He was always thinking about others. That is what I will remember about him. He wanted to protect and nurture the world.
We are taking space to grieve now. Bob is survived by his family and friends who want privacy in this difficult time.
Re: Remembering Bob Lee
#77I was listening to the podcast about hidenburg / cash app stuff last night.
Reading this news was sad.
Re: Remembering Bob Lee
#78was at square for most of the 2010s.
Bob really was a down to Earth guy.
Easily the most approachable of the execs. I am very sad that Bob's life ended so suddenly.
Re: Remembering Bob Lee
#79By “prototype hacker”, do you mean “archetypal hacker”? Or did he something notable around hacking prototypes?
Re: Remembering Bob Lee
#80Bob was "good people", always advocating for others, yet also demanding in expectations. I also knew Bob as an engineer's engineer - able to dive deep down into murky system details (ala The Night Watch - https://www.usenix.org/system/files/1311_05-08_mickens.pdf) while simultaneously advocating for usability in API design. Bob was also the first person I heard the axiom "Code drunk, deploy sober" from. If you know Bob, you know.
I first met Bob when I joined Google and Josh Bloch introduced me to folks working on Guice: Bob Lee, Jesse Wilson, and others. I didn't work directly with Bob, but we talked here and there. I learned he had strong opinions - at one point he tried to convince me to use Dalvik (Android's Java Runtime) for App Engine. I was not convinced. A decision I still stand by today. :)
A bit later Bob left Google to join Square and become CTO, and a bit after that I left Google to start Square's ATL office [1]. I still remember having run the technical interview gauntlet, meeting Bob for a final interview, and him wanting to grill me with a circular queue implementation. [2] Bob and I talked about my work history, and it jogged his memory. In an interview training class that Bob and I later gave together, he recalled being embarrassed about the experience and exhorted everyone to make sure they fully read the candidate's resume before the interview.
Bob was always hands on. You respected his opinions and advice even if you didn't always agree. It's a technical depth that's hard to maintain as you get higher up in management, and I got the impression that it's one of the reasons why he eventually moved on from Square as it was growing from hundreds of employees to thousands.
I like to think of Bob as a kindred spirit. We both grew up in Cobb County, both striving to be world-class engineers. He made the world seem smaller, even if it took a Google re-org, some serendipity, and repeated travel 3,000mi west to get to know each other. RIP Crazy Bob from Cobb.
1) Along with six other Xooglers
2) I refused - I was burnt out from all the previous interviews at that point.