Former Google CIO Suggests 'Do Dumb Things'

itwbennett writes "Speaking at the CA Expo in Sydney, Australia, former Google CIO Douglas Merrill shared some management tips he learned during his tenure at the search giant. At the top of the list: 'Don't be afraid to do dumb things.' Merrill recalls that 'most of the early Google hardware was stolen from trash and as the stuff they stole broke all the time they built a reliable software system. Everyone knew we shouldn't build our own hardware as it was 'dumb', but everyone was wrong. Sometimes being dumb changes the game.' Another pearl of wisdom from Merrill: 'the more project management you do the less likely your project is to succeed.'"

Comments

Re:Hah!

[Sadsfae]

"the more project management you do the less likely your project is to succeed."

There is quite a lot of truth to this statement.

Re:In what way did it change the game

[wisnoskij]

Many huge businesses run on tiny profit margins. if you do enough business then it compensates and google does a ton of business.

And thus are huge percentage increases. 20% more cost to operate the hardware and 10% more to build? That would of turned a healthy profit margin into a non existent one (don't forget we are talking about the beginning of Google so I doubt that they had so many employees to make hardware cost insignificant).