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A review by fbroom
How Google Works by Jonathan Rosenberg, Eric Schmidt
3.0
I’m not sure about this one. I’ve heard many of the ideas in the book somewhere else (culture, 20% time, hiring, innovation, planning, ship & iterate, facilities and so on) so I didn’t feel like I learned anything new plus these ideas were vaguely talked about in this book. It wasn’t really useful. I read Creativity Inc three years and thought it was much more useful and inspiring because Ed talked about many of the mistakes Pixar made, how they happened, what they learned and how they corrected the situation. In this book everything was great and some small issues/mistakes were mentioned quickly and vaguely without telling us why these issues happened and what they learned from it.
Notes:
They first describe smart creative who are smart workers. They are business smart. They know their technology and are creative. They are experts in their fields. They let data decide but not overtake and so on. How do you provide an environment where they can do their best?
- Culture: You need a great culture and a slogan they people do believe in. You need to plan your culture early.
- Strategy: you don't want a rigid business plan that limits freedom but a great solid foundation and a fluid plan that accommodates change. Run by ideas not hierarchy.
- Facilities should not be a symbol of status. Everyone should work together in the same space. Keep it crowded so that people run into each other. Keep teams small.
- make your organization flat. Maximum direct reports of 7.
- Knaves vs Divas at work. Tolerate Divas.
- Offsites for fun.
- Base products on technical insight and not on market research.
- Being able to grow platforms and scale them quickly is a must for the future.
- Hiring: Hire intelligent people able to learn what the future will hold. Experiences shouldn’t the only thing. Everyone should be invested in hiring, not just recruiters. make it a privilege.
- Make interviews matter. Questions that show the candidate’s ability to deconstruct complex problems. Make interviews shorter. No need for a whole hour. Hiring managers should not have the hiring decision. Hiring Committee.
- Reward employees just like star athletes.
- Create side projects aside from their day job to engage employees. Make job movement easy especially for high performers.
- Decision making: make it inclusive. Defer some decisions to other people.
- Make self-reviews and share them with your staff.
- Corporate Communication: share information. Be transparent. Share board meeting reports...
- Innovation: sometimes you don’t know how much money a new idea or innovation will make and you can’t, just focus on the user and worry about money later. Thing big. It should be a stretch to achieve. Sometimes overfunding hurt your project.
- 20% Time: give your employees time to innovate and explore ideas. This time isn’t paid. Workers are motivated by the work itself.
- Ship & Iterate: start with a great set of features. Add more later as you go.
- Future:
Notes:
They first describe smart creative who are smart workers. They are business smart. They know their technology and are creative. They are experts in their fields. They let data decide but not overtake and so on. How do you provide an environment where they can do their best?
- Culture: You need a great culture and a slogan they people do believe in. You need to plan your culture early.
- Strategy: you don't want a rigid business plan that limits freedom but a great solid foundation and a fluid plan that accommodates change. Run by ideas not hierarchy.
- Facilities should not be a symbol of status. Everyone should work together in the same space. Keep it crowded so that people run into each other. Keep teams small.
- make your organization flat. Maximum direct reports of 7.
- Knaves vs Divas at work. Tolerate Divas.
- Offsites for fun.
- Base products on technical insight and not on market research.
- Being able to grow platforms and scale them quickly is a must for the future.
- Hiring: Hire intelligent people able to learn what the future will hold. Experiences shouldn’t the only thing. Everyone should be invested in hiring, not just recruiters. make it a privilege.
- Make interviews matter. Questions that show the candidate’s ability to deconstruct complex problems. Make interviews shorter. No need for a whole hour. Hiring managers should not have the hiring decision. Hiring Committee.
- Reward employees just like star athletes.
- Create side projects aside from their day job to engage employees. Make job movement easy especially for high performers.
- Decision making: make it inclusive. Defer some decisions to other people.
- Make self-reviews and share them with your staff.
- Corporate Communication: share information. Be transparent. Share board meeting reports...
- Innovation: sometimes you don’t know how much money a new idea or innovation will make and you can’t, just focus on the user and worry about money later. Thing big. It should be a stretch to achieve. Sometimes overfunding hurt your project.
- 20% Time: give your employees time to innovate and explore ideas. This time isn’t paid. Workers are motivated by the work itself.
- Ship & Iterate: start with a great set of features. Add more later as you go.
- Future: