Title : What makes Google such a great place to work? (Part 2)
Link : What makes Google such a great place to work? (Part 2)
What makes Google such a great place to work? (Part 2)
The scope
We're in cliche territory here, but there's no avoiding that it's true: Google likes to think big. At no point on any project there did I feel I was just working on a little toy system that wouldn't make much of an impact. Even relatively small features that I worked on like Real Estate Search were likely to be used by hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of people. On the resource side, too, the amazing ease with which you could start a computation using tens of thousands of CPU cores and terabytes of RAM was quite intoxicating. Easy to forget, but always amazing once remembered.
Google still does quite a lot of "because it's there" type thinking. Although there's certainly much more of a product focus than there used to be such that individuals can no longer do whatever they want (something many Googlers complain bitterly about), Google often pursues new areas of innovation without a clear idea of what the payoff will be. Like with NASA, the payoff often comes in the many tangential solutions developed in order to reach the final goal (dustbusters, anyone?). This is especially true of Google X, who are responsible for self-driving cars and Google Glass and what not.
The thinking carries throughout the organisation, though. I still remember questioning a Director about a massive and expensive expansion in the size of Google's web-search index. This expansion was not backed up by numbers that could show improved search quality as a result of the larger index. The Director's attitude was simple: the web is growing, you have to stay ahead of the curve. And also: not all improvements can be measured; Google's goal should be to index as close as possible to everything that's out there, and that's exactly what he was going to do. It seemed strange at the time, but now it feels exactly right. Do everything as big and as well as you can; the benefits may not be obvious now, but they will be realised eventually.
The people
Many companies have plenty of good or even great people working for them. IBM certainly did, and I learnt a lot from them. What's different about Google is that nearly all the people are good and intelligent people, and they are empowered to do their job properly. Not just within engineering or the technical organisation, but across all the functions: sales, marketing, HR, admin assistants, project managers, technical support, recruiting, the works. What does it mean when (to pick a random example) HR is not staffed by a bunch of idiots? They become no longer an organisation to be worked around and avoided, but rather a partner that helps you get things done. Not happy with an aspect of recruiting procedure? Talk to a recruiter; they may just be able to get it changed. When you no longer dread having to deal with segments of your own company, life gets quite a bit better.I exaggerate a bit here; of course there is dead weight at Google, and the company could arguably do a better job of moving people on, but the percentage of good people across all functions is much much higher than anywhere else I've encountered.
There are, I think, a few reasons for the goodness of the people. The fact that the company probably spends more money per employee (salary, perks, office fitout, etc.) than most others certainly helps, especially in areas that could otherwise be cheaply outsourced (e.g. basic HR services). Keeping nearly everything in-house and hiring qualified professionals to do every job makes a big difference. Another thing that's important are the rigorous processes around recruiting and promotion. In both cases the decisions are made by committees; while in most cases committees are horrible things to be feared, when making hiring and promotion decisions leaving it to a group of people who have no vested interest in the outcome (unlike, for example, the hiring manager) is an eminently good idea. The fact that HR keeps an obsessive data-driven reign over the whole process makes things even better.
The most important thing in my opinion, though, is that good people attract good people. Google started on the right foot, didn't lose sight of the importance of good people, and the whole thing has been snowballing ever since.
The perks
I thought about whether to list the perks as one of the great things about Google. It seems like a theme that's been done to death, and it's not one of the things that makes Google a great place to work in the following way: Google without the perks would still be awesome; a crappy workplace with Google's perks would still be crappy.
But still, there's no denying the perks add to what makes Google special, so they made the cut.
You can go to any number of sources on the web to find out about Google's perks. There are free (very good) meals, rooms full of snacks, drinks, and coffee, massages, slides, fireman poles, couches, sleeping pods, gaming rooms, relaxation rooms, dual 24" monitors, exciting team offsite events, Christmas parties, beer on Fridays, 20% time to work on projects of your choice, and more besides. A real embarrassment of riches. And though as I explained above these perks are neither necessary nor sufficient for Google's goodness, they present a general sense of the company's generosity that (apart from the immediate benefit of the perks) makes one feel valued as an employee. It's the icing on the cake, and it makes each day a bit more pleasant and exciting. One thing one never feels about work at Google is that it's drab, or that you're being taken advantage of.
Now, I've seen some commentary around Google's perks along the lines of "Google only provides all these perks to manipulate people into spending more time at work, boo Google". This strikes me as unnecessarily cynical. Nobody is forced to (for example) stay late for the free dinner; if they want to, and end up spending longer at work because of it, that's called a win-win. There's never any pressure to do so. Don't get me wrong, I understand that Google is a for-profit company and has instituted policies that help retention and productivity. But to therefore reduce everything it does into a cynical exercise in manipulation is to misunderstand the mutual benefit that exists in a company having a happy workforce.
The openness and trust
Google's a bit of a bunker from the outside; many people are surprised when they first start there at how open the company is internally. In fact it turns out that the strong sense of secrecy with the outside world is maintained in order to allow a culture of trust and openness internally. At Google, most people have access to most information about most things. With certain exceptions, it is possible to browse detailed project pages describing other teams' work, and to view the source code of other projects. Executive decisions are usually given along with a rationale, rather than by simple fiat. Larry and Sergey even tend to be around at TGIF in Mountain View to answer any questions employees may have about the company. Generally, the culture is "open by default" which, when combined with the intolerance for bullshit described in the previous post, means that ordinary employees have unusual insight into what is going on at the company, all the way up to the highest levels.
Being as open as Google is internally requires a great deal of trust in employees, and trust is really something that runs throughout the company's ethos. People are generally empowered to make sensible decisions without having to run up the management line for permission about everything they do, whether this is making a decision to fix a bug in a certain way or purchasing a particular item to help in developing a project. Even Legal are there more to give advice and to help than to say "no" to things (there are exceptions, of course!) The culture is one of asking for forgiveness rather than permission. If you screw up or are found to be wasteful, you will be held accountable for that. Until then, nobody will really question your decision to do release a particular version of a product, go on a trip, buy an item, etc. As a result of this, more things go wrong at Google than at most places, but in my view the tradeoff is highly beneficial.
(Note that Googlers may take issue with the above characterisation. There are certainly approval processes, in particular around launching new products, but nonetheless an unusual degree of liberty remains.)
In my mind, trust is the only truly effective way to run a high-functioning company such as most companies in the technology space. The alternative, which is processes, approvals, and metrics, severely reduces productivity and stifles the ability of an organisation to innovate and to take risks. I find metrics (or "KPIs" as they often seem to be called in enterprises these days) particularly toxic: rare is the KPI that cannot be gamed; in nearly all cases ruling by KPI means that you optimise for the KPI rather than for the underlying business objective. The two are rarely the same, and it's hard to notice until it's too late. A topic for a future blog post, perhaps.
So anyway, how did Google achieve its culture of trust without it being terribly abused? There's no magic trick. Hire good people, give them a sense of identity with the company, make it so they love to work there, and provide a modest level of oversight. Don't micromanage. Make sure performance is measured in as accurate as possible a way (notoriously difficult, but peer reviews certainly help). Self interest and social pressure will do the rest.
Photo by Marcin Wichary CC 2.0
Being as open as Google is internally requires a great deal of trust in employees, and trust is really something that runs throughout the company's ethos. People are generally empowered to make sensible decisions without having to run up the management line for permission about everything they do, whether this is making a decision to fix a bug in a certain way or purchasing a particular item to help in developing a project. Even Legal are there more to give advice and to help than to say "no" to things (there are exceptions, of course!) The culture is one of asking for forgiveness rather than permission. If you screw up or are found to be wasteful, you will be held accountable for that. Until then, nobody will really question your decision to do release a particular version of a product, go on a trip, buy an item, etc. As a result of this, more things go wrong at Google than at most places, but in my view the tradeoff is highly beneficial.
(Note that Googlers may take issue with the above characterisation. There are certainly approval processes, in particular around launching new products, but nonetheless an unusual degree of liberty remains.)
In my mind, trust is the only truly effective way to run a high-functioning company such as most companies in the technology space. The alternative, which is processes, approvals, and metrics, severely reduces productivity and stifles the ability of an organisation to innovate and to take risks. I find metrics (or "KPIs" as they often seem to be called in enterprises these days) particularly toxic: rare is the KPI that cannot be gamed; in nearly all cases ruling by KPI means that you optimise for the KPI rather than for the underlying business objective. The two are rarely the same, and it's hard to notice until it's too late. A topic for a future blog post, perhaps.
So anyway, how did Google achieve its culture of trust without it being terribly abused? There's no magic trick. Hire good people, give them a sense of identity with the company, make it so they love to work there, and provide a modest level of oversight. Don't micromanage. Make sure performance is measured in as accurate as possible a way (notoriously difficult, but peer reviews certainly help). Self interest and social pressure will do the rest.
In conclusion
Google is not perfect. There are bad projects, bad processes, bad people, bad days. Sometimes things happen that are complete counterpoints to all the great stuff I listed above. I certainly didn't come home from every day of those five years at Google with a spring in my step and a song in my heart. But, just because it isn't perfect doesn't mean that it isn't damn good. It is. And I'm glad to be going back.
Photo by Marcin Wichary CC 2.0
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