David Hirsch, a former Googler who has just joined a venture-capital firm as a partner after an eight-month-long job search, has one provable talent: Excellent timing. Hirsch joined Google in 2000, and spent eight years at the company. But a former colleague tells us Hirsch was "useless." Google's touchy-feely management were too confrontation-averse to actually fire him; instead, Hirsch was demoted twice and eventually moved to a recruiting job in HR, where he worked for the last two and a half years of his so-called career at Google, accourding to our source. Unqualified even for a sales job? Sounds like most venture capitalists we know.

David Hirsch, one of Google's earliest salespeople, is leaving the company after eight years to advise startups, Silicon Alley Insider reports. His track record is mixed: He helped launch Google's attempts to broker print ads, an effort which has met with little success. But having joined the company early enough that he was mostly vested at the time of its IPO, he's surely got a big enough bankroll to get startup founders interested. Our favorite tidbit? Hirsch previously worked at Snowball.com. Snowball, now part of News Corp., bought that domain name from a gay porn site.