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143 reviews for:
Work Rules!: Insights from Inside Google That Will Transform How You Live and Lead
Laszlo Bock
4.03 AVERAGE
143 reviews for:
Work Rules!: Insights from Inside Google That Will Transform How You Live and Lead
Laszlo Bock
4.03 AVERAGE
challenging
inspiring
reflective
medium-paced
This book is okay. Like most business reading by professionals, the anecdotes and policies shouldn't be directly stolen, but it's worth meditating on and considering how Bock's experience might apply in your circumstance. I myself work outside of operations at a small company, which means that we have different opportunities and constraints.
Since I found most of the value in thinking on the content (rather than consuming the content directly), I have mixed feelings on the length. The text is small, so it's actually relatively long, but maybe I needed the full time to really work through it. You won't mistake this book for a humor piece, but Bock does his best to make it reasonably interesting.
So here were a few Google ideas that I found interesting and scribbled down as notes:
1. Compile an annual list of the biggest frustrations rather than direct feedback
2. The company-wide survey has questions submitted by employees
3. Separate timing for compensation changes and reviews
4. Peer reviews ask 1) 1 single thing the person should do more of 2) one thing the person could do different to have more of an impact
5. Kudos system
6. Use nudges to shape the right behavior in onboarding
Since I found most of the value in thinking on the content (rather than consuming the content directly), I have mixed feelings on the length. The text is small, so it's actually relatively long, but maybe I needed the full time to really work through it. You won't mistake this book for a humor piece, but Bock does his best to make it reasonably interesting.
So here were a few Google ideas that I found interesting and scribbled down as notes:
1. Compile an annual list of the biggest frustrations rather than direct feedback
2. The company-wide survey has questions submitted by employees
3. Separate timing for compensation changes and reviews
4. Peer reviews ask 1) 1 single thing the person should do more of 2) one thing the person could do different to have more of an impact
5. Kudos system
6. Use nudges to shape the right behavior in onboarding
This was a book that seemed targeted to two groups of people: 1) general laypeople who knew of the great employer brand reputation of Google, and wanted to get a peek under the hood, so to speak to understand HOW that reputation came to be, and 2) HR professionals who may be looking to replicate the results achieved at Google. I believe that this was a great book for those two audiences -- it went into great detail into the inner workings at Google of everything from culture building to the nuts and bolts of hiring/promotion/letting go.
I personally was left feeling a little dissatisfied, because I represent a slightly different profile of reader: someone who is looking to potentially move into a progressive HR/people operations type organization, but not neatly filling one of the three talent archetypes that Bock lays out (HR generalist vs business strategy consultant vs analytical/research expert). I am left feeling hungry to learn more about the biographies of the leaders who led people operations at Google: how did they get there? What were the specific projects they took on to pave the way into people ops leadership? We got snippets of Bock's own biography -- McKinsey to GE to Google -- but honestly, McKinsey to ANY business leadership role is usually a pretty boring story, and not relatable to the vast majority of workers.
I will also say that reading this book in 2021, with the media reporting turmoil around Google's DEI initiatives, including failures around efforts to cultivate engineering talent pipelines around historically black colleges and universities, puts a whole different note on how Google's workplace culture succeeds -- and how it might actually be failing. (In particular, Google's famously "selective" hiring/recruiting process seems like it may be explicitly engineered to reduce diversity of background -- a pretty terrible message in this post-2020 year.
That said, I enjoyed this book (which I consumed in audio format), and whole heartedly recommend it to others who are interested in the nuts and bolts of assembling "bespoke" workplace strategies for hyper-productive organizations.
I personally was left feeling a little dissatisfied, because I represent a slightly different profile of reader: someone who is looking to potentially move into a progressive HR/people operations type organization, but not neatly filling one of the three talent archetypes that Bock lays out (HR generalist vs business strategy consultant vs analytical/research expert). I am left feeling hungry to learn more about the biographies of the leaders who led people operations at Google: how did they get there? What were the specific projects they took on to pave the way into people ops leadership? We got snippets of Bock's own biography -- McKinsey to GE to Google -- but honestly, McKinsey to ANY business leadership role is usually a pretty boring story, and not relatable to the vast majority of workers.
I will also say that reading this book in 2021, with the media reporting turmoil around Google's DEI initiatives, including failures around efforts to cultivate engineering talent pipelines around historically black colleges and universities, puts a whole different note on how Google's workplace culture succeeds -- and how it might actually be failing. (In particular, Google's famously "selective" hiring/recruiting process seems like it may be explicitly engineered to reduce diversity of background -- a pretty terrible message in this post-2020 year.
That said, I enjoyed this book (which I consumed in audio format), and whole heartedly recommend it to others who are interested in the nuts and bolts of assembling "bespoke" workplace strategies for hyper-productive organizations.
This book is very insightful and has a lot of ideas about how to be a leader and manage a team. I was very impressed by the ideas and I think they can be applied across many disciplines. I can't recommend this book enough.
A voyeuristic look at what it’s like to work at Google. While it does read like one long ad/recruiting tool for the company, there are some interesting bits about how to approach hiring, managing, and retaining employees, some of which I’d like to implement for my own team.
challenging
hopeful
informative
inspiring
reflective
medium-paced
challenging
funny
inspiring
medium-paced
This book is about my department at Google and the work we do. I wish everyone would read it, they'd have an easier time understanding my job :)
Interesting but most of it is impractical for schools except for the chapter on creating a learning organization - that chapter was very insightful and useful for organizational changes I'm thinking about at work.
Feels: loved every page! Geeking out on all things people ops.