Jeff Bates, also known as hemos, is the co-founder of

Slashdot ''Slashdot'' (sometimes abbreviated as ''/.'') is a social news website that originally advertised itself as "News for Nerds. Stuff that Matters". It features news stories concerning science, technology, and politics that are submitted and evalu ...

along with

Rob Malda Rob Malda (born May 10, 1976), also known as CmdrTaco, is an American Internet content author, and former editor-in-chief of the website Slashdot. Career Malda is an alumnus of Hope College and Holland Christian High School. In 1997, Malda and ...

("CmdrTaco").

Biography

Bates graduated from

Holland Christian High School Holland Christian High School is a private, Calvinist high school in the city of Holland, Michigan. Holland Christian's colors are maroon and white, and their nickname is "The Maroons". Holland Christian High School is the only grade 9–12 buil ...

in 1994 and received a

Bachelor's degree A bachelor's degree (from Middle Latin ''baccalaureus'') or baccalaureate (from Modern Latin ''baccalaureatus'') is an undergraduate academic degree awarded by colleges and universities upon completion of a course of study lasting three to six ...

in History and Biology from

Hope College Hope College is a private Christian liberal arts college in Holland, Michigan. It was originally opened in 1851 as the Pioneer School by Dutch immigrants four years after the community was first settled. The first freshman college class matricul ...

in 1998. Malda and Bates created Slashdot in 1997, while undergraduates at Hope College. In 1999 they sold the site to Andover.net, which was acquired by

VA Linux Systems Geeknet, Inc. is a Fairfax County, Virginia–based company that is a subsidiary of GameStop. The company was formerly known as VA Research, VA Linux Systems, VA Software, and SourceForge, Inc. History VA Research VA Research was founded in No ...

in 2000 (which became

SourceForge, Inc. Geeknet, Inc. is a Fairfax County, Virginia–based company that is a subsidiary of GameStop. The company was formerly known as VA Research, VA Linux Systems, VA Software, and SourceForge, Inc. History VA Research VA Research was founded in Nove ...

in 2007, then Geeknet, Inc. in 2009). Bates served as Director of Media Operations for Geeknet from May 2001 through July 2004, when he became Vice President of Editorial Operations and Executive Editor of Slashdot. In February 2008 he became Geeknet's Vice President of Platform and managed the core engineering and product teams for Slashdot,

freshmeat Freecode, formerly Freshmeat, is a website owned by BIZX, Inc., hosting mainly open-source software for programmers and developers. Among other things, the site also hosted user reviews and discussions. While a majority of the software covered i ...

, and

SourceForge SourceForge is a web service that offers software consumers a centralized online location to control and manage open-source software projects and research business software. It provides source code repository hosting, bug tracking, mirrorin ...

. In August 2011, Bates joined

Google Google LLC () is an American multinational technology company focusing on search engine technology, online advertising, cloud computing, computer software, quantum computing, e-commerce, artificial intelligence, and consumer electronics. ...

. He worked at Google as Chief of Staff for the CIO, and as of 2019, is the Chief of Product Operations.

Slashdot

Bates and Malda founded

in July 1997 using the name "chips and dips". The website was renamed in September 1997. Slashdot is a technology-related news website, which features user-submitted and evaluated news stories about science and technology related topics. In 2012, Slashdot had about 3.7 million unique visitors per month and received more than 5300 comments per day. The site has won more than 20 awards, including People's Voice Awards in 2000 for Best Community Site and Best News Site. Occasionally, a story will hyperlink to a server causing a large surge of traffic, which can overwhelm some smaller or independent sites, a phenomenon known as the

Slashdot effect The Slashdot effect, also known as slashdotting, occurs when a popular website links to a smaller website, causing a massive increase in traffic. This overloads the smaller site, causing it to slow down or even temporarily become unavailable. Thi ...

References

Living people American computer businesspeople American Internet celebrities Geeknet Hope College alumni Slashdot 1976 births 21st-century American businesspeople Google employees {{US-business-bio-1970s-stub