Google Cloud loses a key sales exec, less than two years after he ended his long stint at VMware to come aboard

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Jeff Jennings, vice president of customer engineering at Google Cloud

• Jeff Jennings, vice president of customer engineering at Google Cloud, is leaving the company after less than two years.
• Jennings joined VMware in 2000, when it was still just a startup - and rose to become a key executive in the growing networking business. When Jennings joined Google, it stoked concerns that other VMware executives could follow.
• He joined Google Cloud when it was still being led by Diane Greene, who had previously cofounded VMware.
• This departure comes shortly after Google Cloud changed how it would compensate its sales employees, under new CEO Thomas Kurian, who took the reins earlier this year.
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Google Cloud is losing a vice president, Business Insider has learned.

Google staff were informed earlier this week of the departure of Jeff Jennings, vice president of customer engineering at Google Cloud, according to people familiar with the situation. He was at Google Cloud for a year and seven months, according to LinkedIn, starting in early 2018.

Prior to his post at Google Cloud, Jennings served in several executive positions at VMware, where he worked for 18 years. He started at VMware in 2000, just two years after the company was founded, and wound up as a key executive in its growing networking business.

When Google first hired Jennings, it stoked concerns that more VMware engineers could follow, as Business Insider reported when he made the move last year.

At the time of his hiring, he worked once again under Diane Greene, the former Google Cloud CEO who had previously co-founded VMware. However, earlier this year, Greene officially departed Google, and was replaced as Google Cloud CEO by Thomas Kurian, formerly of Oracle.

Read more: Google Cloud has changed how it pays its salespeople, ripping a page out of the Oracle playbook

Within Google Cloud, customer engineers work with sales, product and engineering teams. They help the sales teams solve technical issues for customers and introduce the Google Cloud to customers by explaining technical features. They also help product and engineering teams come up with product enhancements.

Jennings' departure comes shortly after Google Cloud changed how its salespeople would be compensated, aligning more with Oracle and SAP to have a greater focus on commissions. This change was made under Google Cloud CEO Thomas Kurian and Robert Enslin, its global customer operations president, as Business Insider previously reported.

Google did not comment on this story. We've reached out to Jennings and will update if we hear back.

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