Susan Diane Wojcicki (pronounced Woj-sis-ki; born: July 5, 1968) is an American-Polish businesswoman and the former CEO of YouTube from February 5, 2014 to February 16, 2023.[1] She was succeeded by Neal Mohan.
Early life[]
Susan Wojcicki was born on July 5, 1968 in Santa Clara County, California to Esther Wojcicki, an American educator of Jewish descent, and to Stanley Wojcicki, a Polish-American physics professor at Stanford University. She has two younger sisters Janet & Anne.
She grew up on the Stanford campus with George Dantzig as a neighbor & attended Gunn High School in Palo Alto, California, and wrote for the school newspaper.
Her first business was selling "spice ropes" door-to-door at the age 11. A humanities major in college, she took her first computer science class as a senior.
She studied history and literature at private university called Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts and graduated with honors in 1990. She originally planned on getting a PhD in economics and pursuing a career in academia but changed her plans when she discovered an interest in technology.
She also received her Master's of Science in economics from the University of California, Santa Cruz in 1993 and a Master of Business Administration from the UCLA Anderson School of Management in 1998.
Susan is married to a director of product for Wear OS by Google, Dennis Troper on August 23, 1998, in Belmont, California. She have five children. On December 16, 2014, ahead of taking her fifth maternity leave, Wojcicki wrote an op-ed in The Wall Street Journal about the importance of paid maternity leave. She is often quoted talking about the importance of finding balance between family and career.
Career[]
In September of 1998, Google was founded in Menlo Park, California, and the founders, Larry Page and Sergey Brin, needed a base of operations. Wojcicki, who worked at Intel Corporation at the time, rented her garage to the two for a $1700 monthly rent charge, and became Google's 16th employee,[2] leading to her becoming Google's very first marketing manager in 1999.
YouTube[]
Wojcicki helped with the $1.65 billion dollar acquisition of YouTube in 2006, became its CEO in February of 2014, and resigned on February 16th, 2023.
Controversy and Criticism[]
Content creators and users alike on the site have remarked in the past that Susan Wojcicki is destroying YouTube. Her videos and posts regularly receive hate. She has been criticized for her handling of the Children's Online Privacy and Protection Act (COPPA) and incorrectly categorizing videos as kids content, her narcissism and unprofessionalism,[3] often random demonetization of videos and terrible demonetization policies,[4] inaccurately representing the site, therefore creating one of the most hated videos on the site with YouTube Rewind 2018, and then repeating the same mistake again in 2019, favoring popular creators (such as Logan Paul who bring more traffic to the site) over other content creators, more infamously POC ones, therefore allowing them to get away with more over other content creators, not banning controversial content creators such as Onision, hampering creator growth, and multiple other things. Numerous content creators, such as Justmehabibi, Diesel patches, ItsAGundam, TG Venom, and SMG4 (indirectly) have criticized Susan Wojcicki and the state she has left YouTube in.
Since 2016, a Change.org petition was created by Spencer Karter, demanding that Wojcicki should be fired due to her antics on the site. It currently has over two hundred thousand signatures.
Resignation as CEO[]
Susan's letter to creators following her resignation.
On February 16, 2023, Susan would step down as YouTube's CEO due to wanting to focus on her family, her health, and several personal projects.[5]
The new CEO was revealed to be Neal Mohan, who was previously a Chief Product Officer at YouTube.[6]
Personal life[]
Her sister, Anne Wojcicki, is a founder of genomics company 23andMe. She was also married to Google co-founder Sergey Brin from 2007 until 2015. Some suggest that there's a connection between this marriage and Wojcicki's ascension to YouTube CEO.
Susan has kids.[7]
Trivia[]
- Almost all of her videos have more dislikes than likes.
- One of the son's of Susan Wojcicki, Marco Troper was confirmed to be deceased after passing away due to possible overdose.
References[]
- ↑ https://youtu.be/6iAW_Vki24w?t=11
- ↑ https://www.bizjournals.com/bizwomen/news/latest-news/2017/08/wojcicki-emo-could-deter-women-from-tech-careers.html?page=all
- ↑ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1uMix8WPB8I
- ↑ https://www.theverge.com/2019/8/5/20755315/youtube-lgbtq-creators-demonetization-age-gate-recommendation-susan-wojcicki
- ↑ https://fortune.com/2023/02/16/youtube-ceo-susan-wojcicki-stepping-down/
- ↑ https://twitter.com/Dexerto/status/1626269194885992454
- ↑ https://youtu.be/6iAW_Vki24w?t=151
