Google's Ten Golden Rules

selvan writes "Newsweek is running an article entitled Google's Ten Golden Rules. The article, by Eric Schmidt and Hal Varian, going into the philosophy behind the company." From the article: "Don't be evil. Much has been written about Google's slogan, but we really try to live by it, particularly in the ranks of management. As in every organization, people are passionate about their views. But nobody throws chairs at Google, unlike management practices used at some other well-known technology companies. We foster to create an atmosphere of tolerance and respect, not a company full of yes men."

Comments

knowledge workers

[altoz]

What interested me was how they treat "knowledge workers".

Their principles can be summed up like this:

1. Pay them based on what they produce, not how many hours they're in the office.
2. Get out of their way whenever possible.
3. Keep them informed
4. Let teams make decisions, not some arrogant-but-stupid manager

I say that's the sort of thing that makes me want to work there.

Re:knowledge workers

[drix]

Wow, someone else finally gets that. I work in the Bay Area, I'm 23, lots of people I know works at Apple, Google, Pixar etc. Yes they are "great" places to work in the sense that my office doesn't have a volleyball court/laundromat/sumo stable/whatever. But everyone loses sight of the fact that the end goal of all these enticements is simply to get you to stay at work. That's it. To me, this melding of your personal and work lives is the most evil thing of all, and Google is king of it. I don't have $10 million in options sitting around, but I'm out the door most days at 5:00:00.00pm and I have lots of shit going on outside of work. Most of my microserf friends do not.

Pack them in

[Billosaur]

Almost every project at Google is a team project, and teams have to communicate. The best way to make communication easy is to put team members within a few feet of each other. The result is that virtually everyone at Google shares an office. This way, when a programmer needs to confer with a colleague, there is immediate access: no telephone tag, no e-mail delay, no waiting for a reply. Of course, there are many conference rooms that people can use for detailed discussion so that they don't disturb their office mates. Even the CEO shared an office at Google for several months after he arrived. Sitting next to a knowledgeable employee was an incredibly effective educational experience.

Someday I would like to find the person who came up with this concept and shoot them in the head. I find nothing enhances my productivity more than having to listen to other people's meaningless personal phone conversations or conference calls that have nothing to do with what I'm working on, the assorted smells and sounds the human body makes that are not pleasant, the incesant pinging and chiming of IMs and email alerts, not to mention having my personal business available to anyone who wishes to stare over my shoulder.

Oh to have an office! And if I needed a co-worker's help and/or advice and they won't return emails/phone calls, I would simply get my butt out of my chair, go to their cubicle, grab them by the lapels (or goatee if there are no lapels) and tell them we need to have a little chat. There's nothing like the personal approach! And then I could return to my office, close the door, crank the Rush, and get back to doing what I'm supposed to be doing, which is coding.

Re:"Pack Them In"

[Anonymous Coward]

> Also, I take issue with the "Pack them in" criterium. What I like most about my job right now is the space I get. Email, instant-message, radio, etc, make "packing them in" a reality for any company with these technologies. I'd like to be able to fart at my desk or turn on a stereo and not have anybody make a fuss about it.

I'm going to play Devil's Advocate for a second here.

I'll bet that most of us posting to this thread are doing so from single cubicles or (if we're lucky) offices. How many of us would do so from a shared cubicle?

If your cubemate is the kind of guy who'll accept you reading and posting to Slashdot, you're obviously getting along very well -- well enough to be very productive together.

If you're worried he'll rat you out to management for spending half the day on Slashdot -- or if he's the kind of guy who'll spend half his day downloading goat pr0n -- then sharing cubicles is a net win for you, him, and the company, because you've both got nothing else to do in each other's presence but work. (Or learn how to get along with each other and become as co-productive as the cubemates in the paragraph above this one.)

Some of the most productive days I've had have been days when teh Intarweb was down. There was nothing to do but work. And when the work was done, there was nothing to do but stuff I'd originally planned to do tomorrow. When tomorrow's work was done, there was nothing to do but think up new things to make my work life easier.

Combine the self-reinforcing mechanism of always having a peer looking over your shoulder, with Google's policy that 20% of everyone's time is supposed to be spent fiddling around on your own pet projects, and some very interesting things might happen.

Re:Which company?

[frenetic3]

Well, that's good, because you're the exact target audience of that article. I'm usually not that cynical but this is pretty blatant: is the message "Google is a doubleplusgood working environment" really _news_, or just a clever press hit and recruiting tool (as are the massages, chefs, yada yada. Ironic too that it's hosted on a Microsoft-owned news site, haha.)

They need to do _something_ with those billions of dollars :)

-fren

Being happy is good

[Anonymous Coward]

But everyone loses sight of the fact that the end goal of all these enticements is simply to get you to stay at work. That's it.

But on the other hand, the way they get you to stay at work is by making you genuinely want to stay at work because it's enjoyable. I really don't think that's evil--if it works, you are happy; if it doesn't then you don't have incentive to stay later than your work requires, and you go home.

I work at one of the companies in your list, and I know people in both camps, and I haven't seen any negative repercussions for the people who don't spend their leisure time at work. They still get their work done, and management recognizes and respects that. Mileage may vary from group to group or company to company of course, but that's certainly the way it is all around me.