I found these slides rather shallow. Smart, creative people are the best employees? Who knew! The Internet led to massive disruptions in traditional businesses? Wow!
Sorry for my cynicism/sarcasm, but I see the book campaign as Eric Schmidt positioning himself for his next role. He's trying to secure his personal Google legacy as he gets ready for an exit. I can't imagine it's all that enticing to go from CEO to chairman in a company where the founder takes back the CEO role... how much influence does that leave you?
First, the slides are meant to be simple. Notice how this is written/drawn in a children's book style? Second, I do think it's very very provocative for "formal" people like me. I'm the business guy in a suit who just left Procter & Gamble.
Dividing this sort of knowledge between East/West is antiquated at best. New York City has a vibrant startup scene and Boston is the center of the robotics industry.
Really? I thought they were enticing. This is a slideshow promoting a book, so I'm not expecting great insights or data, but rather an overview of what subjects the book is touching on. Most of those ideas are very abstract, and I think they did a great job of visualizing them. I like this slide for example: http://de.slideshare.net/ericschmidt76/how-google-works-fina... And from the book I would now expect there to be one chapter about how to implement a culture where everybody feels intitled to raise their opion and submit new ideas.
>Who knew!
From my limited work experience I would say companies still make the same mistakes, and haven't catched up on a lot of very very obvious ideas...
I couldn't agree more with you. I was expecting some fact-based, data-driven insights/perspectives from Google - so, for me I'd say the "insights" seem disappointingly shallow because they are just "opinions".
I keep hearing that one of the big way in which "how google works" is different is that their "people operations" (HR) runs very differently from other companies. I would have loved to understand - how?
"What's different now?" is such a, I am sorry to say, stupid question. Depending on anyone's opinion, their world view, whether they think macro or micro - the answer can range from "nothing at all" to "everything is different". Lets take communication as an example - "what's different now?" - depending on who you talk to, they can argue that the fundamental needs are just the same (just forms have evolved) or someone can argue that things are radically different now because of X (where X could be snapchat or any new-age medium etc.). The same is true for entertainment - I have had discussions where I was convinced that the "fundamental need to be entertained" is just the same, but I also see so many new media around (so of course, its different now).
It would have been great if they had given more insights on how a successful internet age company truly works from the inside - a bit more than "its best to work in small teams, keep them crowded, and foster serendipitous connections". I thought Eric/Google could contribute a new perspective to this discussion, given their vantage point. Otherwise its just another tautological business/self-help book.
I am a bit disappointed because Google's vantage point in this world is so unique (they see so many things in the world, that others don't - given their reach & size) - that they could have really added something very positive and new to "What's different now".
The whole point about "Smart Creatives" also seems so shallow - for hundreds of years and maybe before, "Smart Creatives" as they have defined it, are having tremendous impact! Where is the "So what?"
I understand that this is just a teaser to encourage people to read the book. If so, its just bereft of any fact-based, data-driven, truly unique perspectives or insights that I, personally just won't bother.
I think the reason that you won't bother is that you already get it. This isn't a case of preaching to the choir, these slides are for those who don't get it; ipso facto not you. Once those people who don't get it become enlightened then they will understand that they need to be data driven, unique seeking, opportunity valuing people, and disruptive; just like you!
I saw a study from Google in 2012 about the influence of internet on technology product purchases. It had many insightful nuggets about internet in India (my area of interest) - such as explaining the degree to which internet had spread in smaller cities in India, how people in those smaller cities use the internet in their purchase decisions, the fact that query volumes from mobiles phones in India for the same category were growing 3 times faster than desktop..and other such insights.
It felt that the insights were coming from Google's unique vantage point - i.e. their domination over search. I believe that there are many areas in which a company like Google can add great insights to the world (e.g. how to build a great company from scratch) and that when they share them, it ought to feel like "only Google could have come up with this".
If I read a book from someone senior at say Apple about best practices for managing a global supply-chain - then I'd be very curious to understand their unique point of view.
So my first comment about this being "disappointing" is coming more from that angle - Are these insights only Google can give? I am not sure (although it doesn't invalidate the insights themselves). Now, my second comment that I found them shallow, could be because like you say "I already get it" (although frankly, I don't think so - I feel that I don't get this stuff :) I am just always super curious to learn stuff from Google et al).
The slides, if not educational, are inspiring and elucidating . They might not reveal new insight, but frame existing insight in a way that's easy to understand.
As smart creatives I dont think we're the target audience but rather decision makers at established businesses who are seeing their markets getting disrupted.
I started work at google pretty recently, and expressed an interest in working on a particular project. I made some notes about some of my ideas, and was putting some stuff together to show to one of the teams, to get some input before prototyping.
I asked a senior team member to have a look at the notes I had made, and see if they were ready to show to the wider team.
His advice?
"Go build something, then we can have meetings"
Coming from an academic background I find this type of thinking very refreshing.
I was under the impression that the work load at Google is so heavy that it is almost impossible to get "20% time" anymore. During what time did you work on your idea? Are they freeing you of all responsibilities to build your prototype or do they expect you to do it in your free time and then donate it to the company?
Thanks, I'm very curious about this aspect of Google's culture.
I think it depends. If you're working on something with a hard upcoming deadline, chances are you have no 20% time. If you're working on a launched product in incremental/maintenance mode, chances are you have extra time.
Sometimes greenfield projects or rewrites also permit lots of 20% time, because you've got existing implementations, so you can have some people maintain the old one and some people go work on the new rewrite using new tech.
I'm one of the unlucky ones with very little free time at the moment. :)
I joined Google a few months ago and have not had this experience. The company is gigantic so everybody's situation is a little bit different, but plenty of people still have 20% projects. The culture strongly emphasizes a "build first and ask questions later" attitude.
At least in the part of Google where I worked, there wasn't much pressure, and people generally kept business hours. If you got in at eight you were one of the first in the office, and if you left at six you were one of the last in the office.
Twenty percent projects were a real thing, but less than five percent of engineers participated. As far as I could tell, side projects were not the way to get ahead. The people who advanced were the ones who did what their bosses told them, full stop. For all that Google makes a big deal about having an egalitarian peer-based culture, the end result was remarkably strict and top down. That Japanese proverb about nails fits Google to a T.
Its difficult to get any momentum spending with something if you are only spending 20% of your time on it. While it sounds good, I might prefer to stick to as few projects as possible, so you can actually focus on getting stuff done rather than just context switching.
I was under the impression that the work load at Google is so heavy that it is almost impossible to get "20% time" anymore.
You don't get in trouble for not working enough hours. A six-hour day is more than enough effort to keep you employed. As in most corporate jobs, you could probably get away with 2-4 (spending the other hours at your desk, but learning skills for the next job) if it's not obvious.
You get in trouble for 20%T (being "distracted") if it pisses your manager off, if it looks like you're trying to engineer a transfer off an undesirable project, or if you appear to be putting 50% of your time into the project.
The reason 20%T usually fails (on employee-initiated side projects) is that it's really hard to launch at Google without a full-time launch. The standards are really high. You have to cover a lot of bases that you wouldn't be expected to worry about in a startup, and you'll need to get enough SRE (reliability engineer) support to cover 24 hours. It's not unreasonable that Google is that way, because they have an understandable brand concern when it comes to reliability in new services.
Most successful uses of 20%T are to engineer a transfer, but managers are wise to that and not supportive. That game is actually a bad thing, because it means that to get a transfer requires auditioning, dividing your efforts, and putting your standing on your main project at risk. It's actually a lot harder to transfer to a good project within Google than to get a job at Google. This also means that you can 20%T for the purpose of transferring, only to get screwed on "headcount" and have put your standing on your main team at risk for nothing.
I don't think that your typical, run-of-the-mill manager is going to punish you for 20%T alone, but if the Perf gods decide that he has to stick someone with a "2.9" (bad Perf) this cycle, then having one foot out the door puts you at risk of being the one thrown under the bus. And once you get a 2.9 it's impossible to transfer.
Bringing this back to the slides, I don't see how this applies to most companies. At most places we are utterly swamped with work; the idea that we can go just build something to allow us to have a conversation is pretty mad. Most companies don't have Google's resources, and I don't see how this advice is remotely possible. I can't build the things I need for what we are already expected to do; I certainly am not going to put that further in the hole to build something that will also not have enough resources to succeed.
I'm not arguing with your position, just reflecting on the slides. They seemed to be saying 'this is how you (not google) should be doing it', ignoring the kind of cash flow that is required to make that happen.
But one of the key points so far is a 50/50 mix of engineers/other-roles.
If you're swamped with work - especially if it's busywork! - there's a case for an internal product. If it's not busywork - it means you need to hire ;)
If you can't afford to hire, you've got bigger problems.
That's the same in most companies. But when they say "go build something", it really means "go build something at home, not during your working time!".
In my career, the most interesting things I worked on were mostly done on my spare time.
Then, I left the company and lost the right to use my own code.
Retrospectively, I'd have rather spent this time on my own projects.
This is not how Google works, this is a PR product -- it's full of fashionable and/or trivial things that we see on various blogs every single day. I don't see why is this interesting to the HN crowd, but well, who am I to judge this. :)
As for the presentation itself, maybe it's because I'm becoming more and more grumpier with age and haven't drunk my coffee yet, but there's something to be said about today's langue de bois, with expressions like "smart creative" and "Internet Century" being some worthy examples.
Yeah. They are criticizing the jargon and methods of "big business", yet the language they use and the methods they promote are what all big businesses advocate today (even if only as PR stunts).
I work at a telco, so just imagine the amount of BS I hear being touted (but not applied, of course) everyday... It's no different than this - smart employees, innovation, moving fast,... - just presented in a lousier fashion. :)
Nah, I think it's neither age nor coffee. As much as I love what Google is doing, I get this distinct impression that they're starting to get infected with bullshit language (which usually leads to bullshit thinking). The presentation is full of "wooden language". It's like it was made for some corporate managers or something.
And don't get me started on pictrues in the presentation. It really feels like clip-arts all over again. I just hope they don't add them to Google Docs.
The answer to "What has changed? Which assumptions do people make that are no longer true? Why does everything feel like it's speeding up?" is supposedly "Technology is transforming virtually every business sector."
It list three examples which are mostly true. But the same answer could easily have been said any time in at least the last 120 years -- and it was. I think the complaint about the shallow content in this presentation is completely justified, because there's nothing really new about the idea of change.
Steam power. Electricity. Telegraph. Telephone. Mechanical calculators. Slide rules. Cheap aluminum. Flight. Punch card sorting machines. Linotype machines. Each of those are examples where technology transformed business sectors.
The telegraph made it possible for information to reach around the world on the same day it happened. Ham radio enthusiasts talked to each other around the world, including bouncing TV signals off the moon. Scratch off the names and it's the same ideas that this presentation promotes as something somehow new. It's assumes the fallacy that what you grew up with was slow and unchanging.
It's difficult to read much of the research literature from the 1960s without hearing people talk about the "information explosion" and there being too much change and things out of balance.
Mail order is an 1800s example of "barriers to entry melting away" and is how Sears gained its fame. So was the rise of the daily newspaper, subsidized by advertising that made is possible for people to know what was available.
"Power has shifted from companies to consumers" ... Hello, the 1930s called. Consumer Reports wants to know if you would like a subscription so they can pay for rigorous testing. Or do you seriously think that mass edited unrestricted feedback can't be gamed?
"Individuals and small teams have a massive impact." etc. That sounds a lot like the HP Way, which has as point #1 "We have trust and respect for individuals"
Except, oddly enough, the Google way doesn't mention ethics. Compare to the HP Way where "We conduct our business with uncompromising integrity." and that as a good corporate citizen HP will "meet the obligations of good citizenship by making contributions to the community and to the institutions in our society which generate the environment in which we operate.
Does Google consider ethics less important than business nirvana?
What is new in this presentation that HP didn't cover in the 1960s?
IANAG, but as far as I understand G+ is a twofold process: first, there's transforming Google into a platform (as per Yegge's famous rant [0]) and secondly, there's the mediocre social network (they've managed to fail at both UX and perf, kudos for that achievement). The latter, and the confusion itself are obviously pretty idiotic. The G+ platform, despite the annoying name, is a pretty solid idea.
Larry Page claims to want to be a modern, successful Tesla [1], and I believe and appreciate him for that, but some of his actions since he took the reins again (G+, Android) are ones you'd rather expect from an Ellison or Gates. Probably that's a good tradeoff for being able to sustain innovation at a massive scale, but I'm just wondering whether some of the decisions he makes are just plain uninspired, rather than ruthless.
This being said, Larry is still the reason I want to work for Google at some point in the future. I feel like he's one of the very few high-profile CEOs that appreciate ideas and cool shit more than money, and that's something I think hackers in particular need to appreciate.
My hope is that this is partly the case due to what is often lamented as an endemic sense of entitlement in Generation Y. Capable, well-off, "smart creatives," having been raised to believe that they can and will make a positive impact if only they try hard enough and make the right decisions. Cumulatively (not collectively, yet), they demand the conditions they need to execute and to feel like they're getting a fair bargain for their most precious resource: their "passion."
This might mean that we can make the world a better place by raising their expectations even higher. In other words, if no one will work for Google unless they are given the environment and autonomy to do truly great things, as measured by a well-considered external standard, then Google might just be forced to do great things.
We all know Google has done some things that are not so great. Regulation is one tool the public wields, but perhaps we can do something about that from the inside as well.
In addition to obviously selling the upcoming book this also seems to be selling Google to potential "smart creative" types. Kind of saying that Google is the one which has the ability to give "smart creative" types the freedom they need to flourish. So in addition to selling copies of the book Eric is also selling Google to potential employees.
The presentation is a little silly, yes, but if there's any truth to it - if Google actually works this way - that could make all the difference.
There are places that simply don't give a shit about "smart creative" types, and there are places that claim to have a Google-like culture but in practice are just regular old boss-centric jobs. Every CEO wants to be like Google, but very few actually commit to it.
It usually starts like this: the CEO wants to have smart creatives and delegate decisions. But then he thinks about all that hard-won money he'll be throwing at an employee, so he hires someone middle level or fresh out of college "with huge potential". Then he systematically micromanages the guy, because he just can't make that jump. The poor soul either abides (not so smart creative after all) or quickly runs out of steam (this guy will quickly start looking at job posts). Eventually the new hire disappoints in some way and the CEO cynically complains about the failed promises of the cool tech company culture which he tried to implement.
Seeing a very successful company like Google follow these principles, and win, might influence decision makers in a positive way.
“As a result, barriers to entry that have stood for decades are melting away. Every incumbent business is vulnerable to competition and disruption.”
Upper middle class dudes from elite academic institutions create businesses. What's the new thing? Maybe I'm misstating this and I'm just going to piss away what few points I have less, but hasn't business always been this way?
Railroads killed the stagecoach, the lightbulb killed gas lamps, Craigslist killed the newspapers. Amazon might well kill Google, but if they do, its not necessarily a new thing.
He's talking about the prospects of businesses taking on incumbent businesses, not the chances for individuals. Incumbents like the regulated taxi industry or Borders Books don't just roll over for new challengers no matter where the new firm's CEO went to college.
The guys that started Google came from Stanford, the Facebook guy, Harvard. The Dropbox guys, MIT. Is there someone who went to Bunker Hill Community College or its many equivaltents who was able create a majorly disruptive business? I don't want to sound like Reddit, but link to something.
I am not trying to argue how the game is played. But take the google founder. Here is the son of a computer science academic migrant, who kind of hacked his way into corporate power, without needing to show all the ruthlessnes of the past centuries titans. Now you could say that he was more privileged than your average joe. And It's true. But he is less privileged that you usually needed to be to attaign that level of success. It's true of him, true of Larry Ellison, and countless untold stories. And with them, of all the people they brought into the adventure. Te be fair, It has always been true that self-made giant could come from any avenue of life. The difference is that it has never been so well documented.
Tsssh, please don't wake me up from my startup dreams! But you are right, it happens very rarely that an individual creates a billion-dollar disruptive sexy cool company without the specific kind of socio-eoconomic background you mentioned. On the other hand, one can live a perfectly fine life off a small business with a local scope and - I think - that's not in the unreachable zone unless you are starting from the other extreme side of the society.
One line from the slides (33) - "Optimize for growth, not revenue."
I'm curious, why is everyone nowadays so obsessed with growth? Is growth really that much more important than revenue? What if you strike a balance between the two?
I remember reading what one of the WhatsApp's founders once said: "[..] we focused on business sustainability and revenue rather than getting big fast [..]" And it looks like they did alright.
I am not sure what the full context for your quote is, but most people would agree that Whatsapp focused on growth (in terms of number of users) and not so much revenue (i.e. they made enough to be sustainable and independent).
Many businesses today have a relatively strong network effects of some sort.With that kind of business , growth is what's needed to achieve competitive advantage.
Most of these execs are smart enough not to have a disconnect. They know exactly how decisions are made and what is going on. These slides are about making existing googlers feel good about what is happening around them. It would suck for the talent at google to be called a pyramid slave.
Interesting how on slide 15 when describing characteristics of smart creatives, out of technical knowledge, business expertise and creativity it is business expertise that is associated with needing brain power.
Wow! I Love him talking about creating company culture for smart creative people! Those are presumably the same smart creative people that Google illegally stopped from competing in the job market. Nice one!
Seems like a desperate attempt to drum up book sales. Whomever created this could have just found motivational posters and pasted them in all 50 slides. I found nothing in this but same old tired cliches; try hard, don't give up, think big. "What's different now?"
The fact that this content-free advertisement for Google gets upvoted to the front-page of a community where most people can see right through it (regardless of how they personally feel about Google) suggest HN is getting astro-turfed.
I think google's culture has become quite of a joke, and only the people inside the company are still not aware of it. "Do no evil" has been replaced by "pay no tax".
They've launched two succesful products in their entire history (search engine and gmail), the rest has been bought or only work because they're given away for free.
An from what i've heard, internal culture with meetings that explain what should people at google think to really be a "googler" is turning into an orwelian nightmare ("but it's for the general good" isn't an answer to limited personnal opinion).
Loved the presentation, makes me realise how much more difficult it is to hire and foster innovative culture here in India where the office space is still marred by the age old 'BOSS Rules' culture.
And then you apply for a job and wait... wait... and wait some more with no updates. Rather fix/speed up recruiting than making bogus slides. If a customer (or applicant) expresses interest in your company, also be humble and give an answer within acceptable time.
Not an exact quote but an idea that was expressed in the slides. I'm curious as to how one achieves this....if this was a sincere bit of advice then I'd love to learn more about what he meant!
I can't seem to find it but Jeff Dean did a talk a long while back about How Google's search works, how they predict. I wish I could see it again. He talks about "shard" servers.
I've received the book last week and read it during the weekend. It has plenty of insights and great ideas that you can take and try to use in your current area of work.
The motivation of Google is not even discussed here. Why do you want to create a certain environment for "smart creatives?" Oh yeah, almost forgot... so they'll make products that will make Google lots of money. This always leads to a logic contradiction. If they are so smart and creative, why do they need Google? Everyone knows if you create the next g-mail you still walk in on Monday and get a salary, not equity. You might get a huge bonus, or Google might choose get another airliner instead. That's a risk you'll be taking.
> If they are so smart and creative, why do they need Google?
Many things cannot be created individually, no matter how smart and creative you are. Think of pyramids, space ships, - or even GMail. It's about leveraging the resources of a big company.
And not to forget the low risk: you build something while you are on salary vs. building something for equity that may or may not worth dollars in the end.
Just a tip: you don't want to be one of the people building a pyramid. You may want to think of a non-enslavement-and-death example when you explain why somewhere might be a good place to work. I can just imagine the recruiter's pitch now...
Why? That slave labour was used to build pyramids is a popular but unfounded belief. There is evidence suggesting that some pyramids were built by well-paid government contractors.
Also apparently American-type slavery was a historical abberation. A typical slave in the past was not unlike a salaried employee today. He was well-treated, earned good money for his services and was able to free himself after accumulating enough of it, which is not unlike the FU money many a startup founder wants to have.
Do I? I mind you, "enslavement" has bad connotations mostly thanks to United States, it wasn't that bad in the ancient past.
Also consider that technology sector is somewhat special in this regard. Your typical unskilled worker is pretty much a wage slave. Many a slave in the past (again, excluding US) was in much better situation than your average friendly neighbourhood supermarket clerk.
> Many a slave in the past (again, excluding US) was in much better situation than your average friendly neighbourhood supermarket clerk.
Unless you are using some exotic definition of enslavement, there is a fundamental difference between slave an employee. A slave is a property of his owner [0], thus slave has no agency and is completely dependent on her/his owner decisions. Employee may choose to be dependent on her/his employer to any extent she/he chooses, but it is her/his choice. You may argue that both slave and employer may end up being completely dependent on her/his owner/employer, but from the point of view of the law and society the situation is always completely different.
There are other ways of enforced labour as well as slavery, and some are quite close to home. Indentured workers, and poor houses for example, and the company scrip, are slightly less brutal forms of something similar to slavery, as are workers in the penal system. In all of these systems the workers aren't really able to walk away from their "owner". And some of this is fairly recent involving Ikea [4] and Walmart [5].
I've cited pyramids as an example of what collaborative work can lead to. Of course it's not like slavery, but there's a lot of grinding going on even at Google, they just call it "passion for work".
Ok but if everyone is designing pyramids, and no one is building them, then pyramids never get built. At some point anything big just requires a ton of hard human work to actually be created.
"If they are so smart and creative, why do they need Google?"
Because not everybody wants to build a company.
I made my own company,in the end I become greatly successful, but it took a lot of work, my savings, risks, people around(friends and family), telling me I was crazy, that I should be working for the man because it was safe.
It is not for everybody. I have people working for me that are smarter and more creative than me, but they don't want to be leaders, or do public speaking, or go out of the lab, talk to the customer, or making risks.
If you make a company, or if you work for yourself, you need to do all those things and more in a competent way.
> If they are so smart and creative, why do they need Google?
I can't speak for everybody, but there are plenty of things I can do at Google that I cannot do on my own. Google engineers have access to world class compute clusters, CDNs, data analysis tools, and state of the art libraries for machine learning, speech, nlp, dnn, etc. Having resources like that available empowers creative people to hack around on their big ideas.
"Smart and Creative" does not mean "Lucrative". Less cynically, one might consider it a virtuous circle. Google gives smart and creative people a chance to organize into small teams and innovate. When some of those projects become lucrative, more smart and creative people can be hired, and so on.
I've certainly found myself at odds between projects I'd Love to tackle versus bills that Have to get paid. After enough failures and false starts, it becomes less personal risk and more general survival. I look forward to going out on my own again and trying some more, but I need to contribute to my current employer first as I save up the energy and resources for my next personal endeavor.
Sorry for my cynicism/sarcasm, but I see the book campaign as Eric Schmidt positioning himself for his next role. He's trying to secure his personal Google legacy as he gets ready for an exit. I can't imagine it's all that enticing to go from CEO to chairman in a company where the founder takes back the CEO role... how much influence does that leave you?