Sundar Pichai has had a meteoric rise since joining Google as a 31-year-old product manager in 2004. In the 11 years that followed his first steps on the Googleplex , Pichai was promoted four times, eventually becoming the CEO of Google in 2015.  In that role, he was responsible for the company's core businesses and cash cow — and did a good enough job that, in December 2019, he was promoted one more time, replacing Google cofounder Larry Page as the CEO of Alphabet, Google's parent company.