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

In what way did it change the game

[bugs2squash]

is he saying that if the hardware he made was, say, 20% more power hungry and 10% more expensive it would have rendered Google's business idea unworkable. I'm not sure I buy it. Maybe it allowed him to scale up with less capital, but I think a 20% slower google would still have won hearts and minds during the period it was being created.

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).

Re:In what way did it change the game

[YojimboJango]

If you're not buying that how about buying reading lessons.

He's saying that getting cheap crappy hardware that failed all the time forced them to write software with a high tolerance for failure. A little between the lines and he's saying that if they didn't go through the hardship of failing hardware they would've never written something that could fail over to other machines. I can imagine that a system that fails over to a new server quickly would also be highly scalable with a little tweaking.

That 'dumb decision' to not invest in reliable hardware indirectly helped them build a highly scalable search system that became their whole companies foundation. Over management and strict adherence to known process would have produced a Google search that would've required a massive rewrite to their (at the time only) product right when they were getting off the ground.

TLDR: If you're big enough to hire a consultant that tells you to, "Think outside the box", you're probably too big to think outside the box.

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.

Misleading summary

[101010_or_0x2A]

Does anyone here even read the summary together with the article itself and see if it makes sense? He did *not* say "do dumb things". That statement implies that you know its a dumb thing to do and it will not work, yet you do it anyway. In this case you *are* dumb and should be fired. He said "don't be afraid to do dumb things", which has a totally different meaning. It means that you should try approaches that may be non-obvious, but at least you are attempting to solve whatever the problem at hand is in an ingenious way. Sometimes it does not work and you look foolish, but you often get innovative solutions to tough problems.

Re:Sorry, but Google is no role model

[Anonymous Coward]

Luck is what happens when preparation meets opportunity.
- Seneca
        Roman dramatist, philosopher, & politician (5 BC - 65 AD)

Re:Hah!

[modmans2ndcoming]

Project management is an inverted parabola. Too little and you will fail due to lack of direction and budget, too much and you will smother it.

I can't hear you! ... Okay, I can hear you now...

[Tetsujin]

Continuing this line of thought, Merrill said, "Put all your eggs in one basket; Count your chickens before they hatch. Serve some wine before its time, find yourself an itch to scratch."

Re:Project management

[modmans2ndcoming]

BAD project management gets in the way... a project manager is suppose to get obstacles out of the way of the talent and provide resources where needed... not crack the whip because they are idiots.

Re:Project management

[Anonymous Coward]

rubbish...

Sorry someone will end up doing the job of the project manager. Seen it happen dozens of times.

Get a real one and you see what was missing...

Get a myopic dick and they can grind things to a halt.

Sigh, is it that hard to read?

[SmallFurryCreature]

You have to remember that this was during the last bubble and Google is rather famous for going against the flow. "Everyone" was using the investment money to buy Sun hardware with Oracle databases and those expensive chairs. Google went dumpster diving and because that ZERO cost hardware failed all the time came up with software that could deal with unreliable hardware meaning that google never had to buy 5 nine hardware at insane prices.

This was repeated by Facebook. You will find endless experts claiming you could never scale either PHP or MySql to be a serious site, yet one of the largest sites in the world runs on those two. Same as google proved linux was far more capable then just being a hobby OS for nerds. And proved it again with Android.

Google could afford to offer gmail with insane storage space because they had a very cheap hardware infrastructure. Had they build it with "proper" hardware and software the costs would have been astronomical.

But hey, you know better then Google because you run what mega-corp?