Arnnon Geshuri


Arnnon Geshuri is an American corporate executive. He was vice president of human resources at Tesla Inc. from 2009 until 2017, senior director of human resources and staffing at Google from 2004 to 2009, and vice president of people operations and director of global staffing at E-Trade Financial Corporation circa 2002. In January 2016, he briefly served on the Wikimedia Foundation's board of trustees before stepping down after opposition arose due to his involvement in anti-competitive employer collusion in Silicon Valley.

Personal life

Geshuri was born in 1969 or 1970. His father, Yosef Geshuri, is a clinical psychologist with a Ph.D. in psychology. In Arnnon Geshuri's early life, his father worked at Northwest Missouri State University in Maryville, Missouri, and he attended elementary school there at the university until the fifth or sixth grade. In 1980 his family moved to Porterville, California, a small town in central California's San Joaquin Valley, where he attended high school and a community college. He has a younger brother Oren and an older sister Dorrit, both of whom also graduated with university degrees. Geshuri was described in a local newspaper article as loving Porterville and glad to have been raised in a small town, saying "I'm proud of where I'm from." He said that during high school he had already planned to work for a large company, saying he was "interested in how people work and how big corporations work", so he "wanted to work in a big corporation and understand human behavior in the corporate setting".
His wife's name is Rebecca Geshuri. They were married in 1997 or 1998.

Education

Geshuri graduated from Monache High School in 1987, and Porterville College in 1989. He received a bachelor's degree in psychology from the University of California, Irvine, and a master's degree in industrial and organizational psychology from San Jose State University.

Career and controversies

E-Trade and earlier career

Geshuri was the Vice President of People Operations and Director of Global Staffing at E-Trade Financial Corporation. He also worked at Applied Materials, was an organizational effectiveness consultant for New United Motors Manufacturing, Inc., and in 2002 he co-founded ACI Technical.

Google and "Do Not Call" non-recruiting policy (2004–09)

He was the senior director of human resources and staffing at Google, where he worked from 2004 to 2009 and oversaw all aspects of recruitment. While working at Google, Geshuri was involved in activities that later became the subject of the High-Tech Employee Antitrust Litigation case that resulted in a settlement of $415 million paid by Adobe, Apple, Google and Intel. In one incident, after hearing of a complaint from Steve Jobs of Apple, Geshuri told Google's chairman Eric Schmidt that a recruiter for Google who had tried to hire an Apple employee would be "terminated within the hour" for the action, pursuant to what Schmidt called "a policy of no recruiting from Apple". Geshuri said that such terminations were taking place "every six months or so", despite efforts to make sure recruiters were aware of the policy. Geshuri maintained what he called a "Do Not Call list" of companies Google would avoid recruiting from.

Tesla (2009–17)

He was the vice president of human resources at Tesla Inc. from November 2009. Geshuri said the company was committed to bringing manufacturing jobs "back to California". In 2015, Geshuri led a hiring spree for Tesla. Geshuri placed an emphasis on hiring military veterans in large numbers. He left Tesla in May 2017, with Tesla saying he would be "taking a short break before moving on to a new endeavor".

Wikimedia Foundation (January 2016)

Geshuri was appointed to the Wikimedia Foundation's board of trustees on January 5, 2016, with his appointment effective January 1, 2016, for a period of two years. Geshuri's appointment was controversial among Wikipedia editors due to his historical involvement in the collusion over recruiting practices at Silicon Valley corporations that resulted in prosecution by the U.S. Department of Justice. A contributing factor in the controversy was that his appointment also took place in the wake of the unexpected removal of another board member, Dr. James Heilman, who had been widely supported in the Wikipedia community. A non-binding petition of "no confidence" on his appointment was established, and of the 312 Wikimedia contributors commenting on the petition, 290 voted to request that Geshuri be removed from the Wikimedia Board of Trustees. The board's chair and vice chair announced on January 27, 2016 that Geshuri had decided to step down from the board. They indicated that Geshuri had said he wished to avoid letting the controversy surrounding his appointment be an ongoing distraction for the Foundation and the broader community.