You need to sign in or sign up before continuing.
Take a photo of a barcode or cover
peter__b 's review for:
Did this book transform how I live and lead? No. It's nowhere near as revolutionary or life changing as its subtitle would have you believe. It has a lot of interesting ideas, made even more interesting since they're from the context of Google. I'm sure most people have heard or seen glimpses of how Google supposedly works and treats their people, so having a book where those are explicitly divulged was nice. As with most business books, there were concepts I agreed with and a bunch I didn't see eye-to-eye with the author with, but luckily there were more of the former.
In terms of the writing, it wasn't the best. A few topics were very long-winded and unnecessarily repetitive. There also seemed to be a lot of statistics thrown around which I understand the desire for, especially coming from someone at Google, but they bogged the book down at times. On that note, I think it could have used a bit more editing. I'm sure they could have cut a third or more of the length easily without sacrificing on content. They could even have replaced that with more cases of failed initiatives and issues they've faced, which were some of the more interesting points in the book.
There are too many topics to go through all of them in a review like this, but I'll highlight some of the ones I agreed with or liked.
*Advocating for organisations to give their employees freedom and trusting them to use it wisely
*Knowing that people are more important than the processes
*Utilising the company's existing employees to teach others
*Striving for transparency from not only higher management but from everyone
*Embracing change in general, but making sure it's implemented with care and then tested and reviewed to make sure the changes are continuously working
*Disconnecting performance evaluation from developmental feedback
*Highlighting importance of intrinsic motivation and the counterintuitive benefits of monetary rewards
*How they used 'nudges' in an effort to improve their employee's lives without needing to resort to explicit rules
Here are some of the topics I didn't agree with or disliked. Most of these were because they were too specific to Google.
*Resources and time apparently needed in the hiring process
*Obsession with constant performance evaluation and the supposed 'need' people have for it
*Oversimplifying how they handle poor performance
*Not talking enough about how they handle entitlement issues amongst their workforce stemming from all the perks they offer
*Lack of info on aftermath of cases where projects failed
*Taking tracking and feedback practices too far. Seemed very 1984 at times. Sounded like a lot of time is spent on spying on people, making them fill out surveys or obsess about statistics in general
*After reading some better-researched reviews, I see now that the book isn't as sincere as it claims with employee turnover rates and female employment rates being very much within the industry norms and not significantly better as the author implied
This book made me think about a lot of aspects of how the company I work for does things. I thought starting the book emphasising how more employees should have a 'founder' mindset was quite clever since it makes the reader feel empowered to bring up possible changes within their own organisation. Despite the three stars, I'd definitely recommend this book to most people. There are a lot of good ideas here and it could be the nudge a lot of people and companies need to change and improve the way they work for the better.
In terms of the writing, it wasn't the best. A few topics were very long-winded and unnecessarily repetitive. There also seemed to be a lot of statistics thrown around which I understand the desire for, especially coming from someone at Google, but they bogged the book down at times. On that note, I think it could have used a bit more editing. I'm sure they could have cut a third or more of the length easily without sacrificing on content. They could even have replaced that with more cases of failed initiatives and issues they've faced, which were some of the more interesting points in the book.
There are too many topics to go through all of them in a review like this, but I'll highlight some of the ones I agreed with or liked.
*Advocating for organisations to give their employees freedom and trusting them to use it wisely
*Knowing that people are more important than the processes
*Utilising the company's existing employees to teach others
*Striving for transparency from not only higher management but from everyone
*Embracing change in general, but making sure it's implemented with care and then tested and reviewed to make sure the changes are continuously working
*Disconnecting performance evaluation from developmental feedback
*Highlighting importance of intrinsic motivation and the counterintuitive benefits of monetary rewards
*How they used 'nudges' in an effort to improve their employee's lives without needing to resort to explicit rules
Here are some of the topics I didn't agree with or disliked. Most of these were because they were too specific to Google.
*Resources and time apparently needed in the hiring process
*Obsession with constant performance evaluation and the supposed 'need' people have for it
*Oversimplifying how they handle poor performance
*Not talking enough about how they handle entitlement issues amongst their workforce stemming from all the perks they offer
*Lack of info on aftermath of cases where projects failed
*Taking tracking and feedback practices too far. Seemed very 1984 at times. Sounded like a lot of time is spent on spying on people, making them fill out surveys or obsess about statistics in general
*After reading some better-researched reviews, I see now that the book isn't as sincere as it claims with employee turnover rates and female employment rates being very much within the industry norms and not significantly better as the author implied
This book made me think about a lot of aspects of how the company I work for does things. I thought starting the book emphasising how more employees should have a 'founder' mindset was quite clever since it makes the reader feel empowered to bring up possible changes within their own organisation. Despite the three stars, I'd definitely recommend this book to most people. There are a lot of good ideas here and it could be the nudge a lot of people and companies need to change and improve the way they work for the better.