This book was kind of boring... and that's a mark a high praise.

I've worked at Google for a decade, as a manager for nearly half of that. This book really does describe the way that Google structures the workplace to create an innovative environment. If I hadn't been a bit bored, if I had been surprised, it probably would have been because the book didn't ring true. Instead, this book explores examples of what has worked and what hasn't worked at Google to create a strong culture.

The first two chapters of the book set up some framing philosophy. If you want to create an innovative environment, think like a founder. Feel like you have responsibility for and power to change the culture and working conditions around you, even if it's just for your team. Then give people freedom to do the same for themselves. Freedom and it's closely related sibling, transparency, can be intimidating boons to grant. It will be abused from time to time, but the net gains in innovation, productivity, and happiness will offset those occasional losses.

The next three chapters talk about hiring and it's role in creating a culture of innovation. Find the best people for the job, even if it takes more time. Move away from interviewing on instinct; standardize the interview process. Google does this by having candidates interview with multiple interviewers, some to all of them not on the team the candidate will be working on (it varies by role), and then having the hiring decision made by a committee that is separate from the interviewers.

Once good people are hired, allow them to be innovative. It's not uncommon for hiring to look for the best people and then constrain them until they are no more than average. A key action is to take power away from managers and spread it out. Managers are important. Laszlo discusses Project Oxygen which determined the attributes that make a manager great and helped Google understand why good managers are important[1][2]. But to foster a culture of ownership and innovation, it's important to take away potentially destructive sources of power that managers have such as sole discretion over hiring, firing, salary, and promotion. The book also goes into detailed discussion about Google's philosophy in some of these areas.

Google is known for its benefits, and Laszlo spends a fair amount of time talking about some of our benefits and why they matter. Google targets its benefits so that they increase employee efficiency, community (both internal and external), and innovation; some benefits, such as the survivor benefit for an employees death, we have because they're just the right thing to do. If a benefit doesn't have a positive impact in one of these areas, it's not useful. Another interesting thing is that most of these benefits are not expensive. Food and transportation certainly are, but many other benefits are cheap or free.

The most interesting thing to me is that many of these benefits stem from a single core benefit: giving employees the freedom and time to act on their ideas. Whether it's arranging talks from internal or external speakers on a diverse array of topics, diversity groups setting up both bridging and boding activities, or culture clubs setting up fun events like regular live music performance by Googlers, a lot of what makes Google googley comes from people whose job description doesn't say anything about culture.

Even if I was a little bored at times, I'm glad I read this book. Although things are always changing -- some of the details in this book are already out of date -- the core ideas are worth understanding for anyone who wants to foster a culture of innovation.

(As an aside, this book is probably still worth reading even if you are a Googler. It brings together a lot of the philosophy and history behind why Google does People Ops the way it does. For those who didn't live through the development of these systems, it's good to learn the bigger picture. For those that did, it's good to remember.)

[1] https://rework.withgoogle.com/guides/managers-identify-what-makes-a-great-manage...

[2] It's a pity the gteams research wasn't ready to be part of that book. The research about what makes great teams is even more important than Oxygen, in my opinion: https://rework.withgoogle.com/blog/five-keys-to-a-successful-google-team/ ( )

One of four business books I remember ever reading in my life (3 of them in the last 4 months, all of them in the last 2 years or so). It's a pretty engaging book, though it doesn't solve all the problems of leading great teams at work or anything, but there's some stuff I'll go back to. I dog-eared maybe 30 pages for later review. It's neat to get an inside peek at some of the ways Google has succeeded and failed, and the content seems to be offered sincerely with a desire to help -- it's not just marketing for Google (though it is undoubtedly also marketing for Google). I like that there's emphasis on data and that there are a few short case studies, though I think it'd be hard if not impossible in most companies to reproduce the sorts of things Google can do with data and personnel experimentation. It's the most pleasant, enjoyable, polished of this sort of book that I've read, and I'm glad I read it. Three stars because, ugh, business book, but a pretty palatable one. ( )

A lot of interesting ideas.

This book was given to me by my supervisor with the intent that I would find some takeaways that we could apply to our office.

This was an interesting read, and the author provided many, many anecdotes supporting his main statements. It was well-written, and there are indeed several things that could be applied to an workplace, large or small. Google isn't a perfect company by any means, but they do good by their employees, that's for sure. ( )

Awesome read about all the fundamental stuff that makes Google a great place to work. I always love to read what we've put our in the public sphere about ourselves. ( )