Pleasing Google's Tech-Savvy Staff

An anonymous reader writes "Douglas Merrill, Google Inc.'s chief information officer, is charged with answering that question. His job is to give Google workers the technology they need, and to keep them safe — without imposing too many restrictions on how they do their job. So the 37-year-old has taken an unorthodox approach. Unlike many IT departments that try to control the technology their workers use, Mr. Merrill's group lets Google employees download software on their own, choose between several types of computers and operating systems, and use internal software built by the company's engineers. Lately, he has also spent time evangelizing to outside clients about Google's own enterprise-software products — such as Google Apps, an enterprise version of Google's Web-based services including e-mail, word processing and a calendar."

Comments

All Credit to Him

[Avohir]

I've had to do IT work for tech companies before, and it's like being the caterer at a chef's convention, they always think they could do it better. That he's managed to do it with a relative degree of success at a place as eclectic and high profile as google is impressive. I think the approach is novel too, although I'm not sure how well it would apply outside of their unique company culture.

Re:All Credit to Him

[Kelbear]

I think the kinds of people Google hires are less likely to run executables and install toolbars from seedy and irreputable niches of the internet. Other companies probably can't assume the same of their employees.

Even smart people can make errors of ignorance or naivetè with regards to their computers. It's nice that they've cordoned off the system to prevent them from torpedoing the whole network at once, but you still have a mess on the other side of the wall to clean up. Most of the important stuff is probably saved where they're regularly backed up(Google sure as hell isn't going to have problems with storage space) but there's definitely going to be downtime involved.

It's probably not worth the cost and risk for most companies. If someone wants or needs something on their system, just having them ask first is a reasonable approach.

Re:I wish our IT was like this.

[pongo000]

With all the restrictions on tools and languages, it seems like our IT holds us back more often than pushing us forward.

Beware of any job where IT support calls the shots. That is an incredibly inane and inefficient business model. IT support is exactly that: They are there to support development efforts, not to hinder them with brain-damaged policies usually written and enforced by CTOs that don't have a clue and administered by low-paying drones who substitute authority for what they lack on the pay scale.

Why even bother working for a company like that? With the upswing in IT, you sound like you've got way more than enough experience to find a job elsewhere.

Quick Story

[Cytlid]

I've actually experienced this type of thing in the last two jobs I've had. Allow me to explain.

  I moved from my job in NY as a System Admin for an ISP. I won't name names, but our major tech we used was Cisco, Solaris, Linux and VMware ESX.

  My family and I moved to SC for the nicer weather ... I landed a job as Sr Network Engineer for an ASP. I thought, ASP, can't be too different. Well 800 miles away, some things are the same, some are different. I'm a command-line, CLI type guy. The ASP is an MS Gold Partner and takes advantage of Citrix. All the network gear is Cisco (which is where me and my team come in). I thought, oh great ... I don't belong here (except for the Cisco stuff). For the record, we do have *some* Linux hosting and colo.

  But I setup a few smallish vmware servers and I'm happy. I have my Linux-in-a-box. I've done a bunch of grepping and typing and scripting and such this morning, and I found some new issues that I didn't see before without seeing the "big picture".

  So back to my point. I'm very picky about the apps I use and whatnot, so it's hard for me to "conform" to an IT ruleset about what can and cannot be run on company machines. The ISP I worked at was very flexible in this manner, for some reason I expect this out of the new job.

  Our business model is we sell these published apps and hosting to our customers. We run a large private MPLS network and connect many smaller places to us. They can run Office 2007 from a website.

  Then it hit me. Things have been getting really optimized in the last year or two, so we're using our own stuff. My office apps "live" in a website. The revelation came that now, when it comes to my laptop (or desktop), I can do whatever I want. Notice this is typically a nightmare for common IT shops, but many of our smaller customers think IT is a pain and will be happy with published apps and thinclients. For someone like me, who is tech-savvy, I can format my machine and install Linux (some of the other guys have already done so). Because there's a Citrix web client for Linux (I use it at home). Involve virtualization in the mix, and our datacenter becomes one giant network, one giant machine that we manage and the apps are just floating around inside. We manage all the security and whatnot, and keep it running.

  So in a way, you really can have it both ways. We're not a Web 2.0 shop, but our method is definitely Another Way to Do It.