Steve is the Head Performance Engineer at Google where he works on web performance and open source initiatives. His book, High Performance Web Sites, explains his best practices for performance; it was #1 in Amazon's Computer and Internet bestsellers. His follow-up book, Even Faster Web Sites, provides performance tips for today's Web 2.0 applications. Steve is the creator of YSlow, one of the top 25 Firefox add-ons. He's created many other performance tools and services including the HTTP Archive, Cuzillion, Jdrop, SpriteMe, ControlJS, and Browserscope. He serves as co-chair of Velocity, the web performance and operations conference from O'Reilly, and is co-founder of the Firebug Working Group. He taught CS193H: High Performance Web Sites at Stanford, and does many public speaking appearances.
Steve previously worked at Yahoo! as the Chief Performance Yahoo!. He was named a Yahoo! Superstar. Steve worked on many of the platforms and products within the company, including running the development team for My Yahoo!. Prior to Yahoo!, Steve worked at several small to mid-sized startups including two companies he co-founded, Helix Systems and CoolSync. He also worked at General Magic, WhoWhere?, and Lycos. In the early 80's Steve worked at a few companies doing research in Artificial Intelligence focusing on machine learning.
Steve has a BS in Systems Engineering from the University of Virginia and a MS in Management Science and Engineering from Stanford University.
Steve's interests are varied. He's on the council of First Lutheran Church of Palo Alto and the Couchbase Advisory Board. He has played basketball with several NBA and WNBA players. He's a member of U.S. Masters Swimming and competes in open water swims. He was a member of the Universal Studios Internet Task Force. He participated in setting a Guinness world record. He rebuilt a 90-year-old carriage house. He has a wonderful wife and three daughters.
