″The last person I dated seriously was Janet Yellen, who is the current Secretary of the Treasury,” says former tech executive William Raduchel about 40 minutes into our lunch. I’d asked about his family life, a topic of conspicuous absence in his autobiography,. This wasn’t the answer I expected. It was “50 years ago and we were 20-something. We had a lot of good times and we’re still friends.”
, fainting on an airline. The point, Raduchel says, recalling Schelling, is that: “If you want to stay alert and alive, you have to change what you do every 10 years.” His lack of libation doesn’t affect his volubility on professional topics, but he allows some discussion of the personal. Born in the small city of Houghton, Michigan, as the second son to William Reece Raduchel and his wife, Olive Helena, Raduchel jnr entered the Sputnik generation to whom technology seemed a force of inherent good.He was close to his father, less so his mother. When he was 14, Raduchel snr, a local official and petrol station owner, died.
Some of the technology companies that have been most successful at retaining these star employees such as Google, he says, have let them work on their own projects and eliminated middle managers. But then decisive management is key too, he says, citing brilliant calls made by Google’s founders and others. How to balance those things is hard, though he is adamant that consultants aren’t the answer.
Befitting a man who knows his status miles, he gives the example of a traveller booking a trip replete with flights, hotels and visas just by asking an AI assistant for it. That will upend the standard model of selling things to people through phones and apps, he predicts.
Raduchel got into this vexed space in the pandemic, when he spent 90 days in lockdown, speaking regularly to his doctor, eventually taking a tuberculosis vaccine called BCG and reading medical newsletters. It must’ve been a trying way to spend time for someone who has worked so doggedly throughout his life, to the exclusion of a partner and children. His mother, whom he cared for at his home, had died at 95.