9 ex-Googlers who now run the show somewhere else

Sheryl Sandberg joined Google as its vice president of global online sales and operations in 2001. At the search engine, she was responsible for online sales of its advertising and publishing products, and she helped to launch Google's philanthropic arm, Google.org. She left Google in 2008 to help Facebook's Mark Zuckerberg monetize the social media service.

Position at Google: Vice President of Global Online Sales and Operations

Employed from: 2001 to 2008

After graduating Stanford in 1999, Marissa Mayer joined Google as its 20th employee and first female engineer. Mayer helped develop and design Google's initial search offerings and had a hand in many of Google's products, including Google Search, Google Images, Google News, Google Maps, Google Toolbar and Gmail. Mayer left Google in 2012 to become CEO of Yahoo.

Positions at Google: Vice President of Search Products and User Experience, Director of Consumer Web Products

Employed from: 1999 to 2012

Qualtrics, an online data collection agency, was founded in 2002 by Jared Smith along with his brother and father. But Jared Smith left their small company to join Google in 2004, where he worked for two years on internal tools for the sales team and ad products. At the urging of his younger brother, Ryan Smith, Jared Smith quit Google and returned to Qualtrics, whose user base was starting to take off.

Position at Google: Online Operations Manager for AdSense

Employed from: 2004 to 2006

Liz Wessel spent just over a year at Google as a product marketing manager before leaving to cofound WayUp. The site is now used by more than 200,000 college students looking to land jobs with companies like Microsoft, Uber, The New York Times, and Disney, not to mention Google.

According to her LinkedIn profile, Wessel was a marketing lead at Google, helping to digitize India for the Google Impact Challenge, Great Online Shopping Festival, and the India Elections campaign.

Position at Google: Product Marketing Manager

Employed from: 2013 to 2014

Tim Armstrong played a key role in the establishment of Google AdSense in 2005 and led Google into display advertising. Armstrong left Google for AOL in 2009, where he oversaw AOL's transition away from Time Warner.

Positions at Google: President of Google's America Operations, Senior Vice President, Vice President of Ad Sales

Employed from: 2000 to 2009

Megan Smith joined Google in 2003 as director of new business development. In this role, she led acquisitions of companies and technologies that would go on to become Google Earth and Google Maps. In 2012, she was named a vice president of Google X, a division devoted to projects such as driverless cars and Google Glass smart eyewear, but she left Google X to serve as chief technology officer to the president in 2014.

Position at Google: Vice President of Google X, Director of New Business Development at Google

Employed from: 2003 to 2014

One of its earliest employees, Omid Kordestani joined Google in 1999, where he built its business operations from the ground up. Kordestani went on to become an adviser at Alphabet and Google before jumping ship and joining Twitter as executive chairman in 2015.

Position at Google: Chief Business Officer

Employed from: 1999 to 2015

Kevin Systrom, cofounder and CEO of Instagram, joined Google after graduating from Stanford in 2006. He worked as an associate product marketing manager, supporting products including Gmail, Google Calendar, and Google Reader, among others. He briefly worked on Google's Corporate Development team before leaving to join Nextstop.com. In 2010, he and Mike Krieger launched Instagram.

Position at Google: Associate Product Marketing Manager

Employed from: 2006 to 2009

Brian McClendon joined Google in 2004 after the company acquired his digital mapping software startup, Keyhole. At Google, McClendon oversaw the company's important Maps business for years and was considered one of the most influential engineering executives at the company. He left Google in 2015 to head up Uber's autonomous driving efforts.

Position at Google: VP Engineering

Employed from: 2004 to 2015