I knew Joe Beda, Joe Beda was a friend of mine...

...but Joe Beda was not "the lead developer on Avalon".  Note the key word:  "the".

The New York Post ran a story  that said Google had hired Joe Beda, "the lead developer on Avalon."  Sounds pretty serious, doesn't it?

Some background to clarify.  At MS, people developers are Software Design Engineers or SDEs, but universally referred to as "devs".  Managers are Development Managers and generally run teams of 10 or more, but rather than have that many direct reports, they have a whole bunch of Development Leads or "dev leads" who each manage 2 or 3 or 4 people.   The peers of Development Managers on the purely technical side are Architects (some groups also have pure "Technical Leads").

Joe Beda was "a" Development Lead on the MIL team.  I guess it's an easy walk from there to "Lead Developer" and if you simply add "the"...well.  I don't know the exact count, but there are at least 3 Development Managers, a Director of Development, and 7 Architects on Avalon (Chris Anderson is an Avalon architect, the others keep lower profiles so I won't call them out).  I would guess there are 20 some dev leads on that team.

I'm definitely not dissing Joe, and I'm sure Joe will clarify on his blog sometime, 'cause this would be funny except people make big technology decisions based on whether Avalon is going to ship.