Chapter 1: Becoming a Founder

Larry and Sergey had ambitions beyond developing a great search engine--they wanted to
create a company where work was meaningful.

They gave everyone certain amount of flexibility to work on what they wanted and develop
an off beat work place. This led to various initiatives like Tech Talks, workplace diversity,
welcoming pets, free meals and so on.

Google is one of the few employers of its size to give stock grants to ALL employees.

Throughout history, some prominent businesses that have given such a work atmosphere to
its employees include Ford, Hersheys, and Bell Labs.

Larry and Sergey deliberately left space for others in Google to act as founders. For years,
the trio of Susan Wojcicki (now head of Youtube), Salar Kamangar (now senior executive in
Google) and Marissa Meyer (now CEO of Google) were called the mini founders who were
critical to Googles success.

One of my hopes in writing this book is that anyone reading it starts thinking of themselves
as founders. [...] Its not a question of literal ownership. Its a question of attitude.
 Chapter 2: Culture eats strategy for breakfast
Most people assume; Googles culture = Free food, slides and crazy office spaces. But the
underlying values and assumptions matter much more.

Googles 10 Thing we Know to Be true:

1. Focus on the user and all else will follow

2. Its best to do one thing really, really well
3. Fast is better than slow
4. Democracy on the web works
5. You dont need to be at your desk to need an answer
6. You can make money with being evil
7. Theres always more information out there
8. The need for information crosses all borders
9. You can be serious without a suit
10. Great just isnt good enough

Googles mission: to organise the worlds information and make it universally accessible
and useful

Study by Adam Grant, a professor at Wharton School of Business showed that having
workers/employees meet the people they are helping is the greatest motivator, even if they
meet only for a few minutes (gives more meaning to the work). Google experimented by
showing success stories of SMBs that SMB Services and Sales teams had helped. These
videos, referred to as Magic Moments, helped Googlers feel connected to the companys
mission.

Example of Googles transparency: Newly hired software engg gets access to ALL of
Googles code on the first day itself, which contains the secrets of Googles algorithm and
product details.

Dogfooding: Googlers are the first to try and new products and give feedback

Examples of transparency in other orgs:

- In NY, when the state started asking hospitals to post death rates of a certain
surgery, the deaths decreased by 41% in the next 4 years.
- Bridgewater Associates, the worlds largest hedge fund requires every meeting held
to be recorded and made available to all employees. (Learning tool, clearer
communication, reduction in politicking).
Under the US Tax Code, homosexual couples must pay income tax on value of health
benefits received by a domestic partner, which heterosexual married couples dont have to
pay. When pointed out to the VP of Benefits (Yvonne Agyei), she implemented a policy that
gave them extra payments to cover this tax.

Google conducts an annual survey asking Googlers about the work environment. In 2009,
the survey indicated that it was getting harder to get things done. The CFO, Patrick Pichette
(who recently retired), launched Bureaucracy Busters, an annual program where Googlers
mention their biggest frustrations and help solve them.

The Chief Culture Officer, Stacy Sullivan, has built a network of Culture Clubs, teams of
local volunteers in charge of maintaining Googles culture. They receive modest budgets and
theres no application to lead a Culture Club--you have to be vocal and organise events, and
simply act like a leader. Eventually, shell find you and ask you to take on the role.
 Chapter 3: Lake Wobegon, where all the new hires
are above average
Googles SVP of Knowledge, Alan Eustace, A top notch engg is worth three hundred times
or more than an average engg...Id rather lose an entire incoming class of engineering grads
than one exceptional technologist.

Example of exceptional technologist:

Jeaf Dean, an early Googler and key mind behind the search algo. Held in high esteem by
team members, so much so, they have Chuck Norris-esque facts about him on a go link.
- When Alexander Graham Bell invented the telephone, he saw a missed call from Jeff
Dean
- Jeff Deans keyboard doesnt have a Ctl key cause hes always in control.

Rule of thumb: Only hire people better than you in some meaningful way.

Chapter 4: Searching for the best

Larry Page reviews every single yes made to a candidate before hiring.

In 2004, Google put up a billboard in Massachusetts with a puzzle that led to a website with
another puzzle. This was an attempt to attract smart people for recruitment. However, they
ended up hiring no one through that campaign and it was a waste of resources.
 Chapter 5: Dont trust your gut

Interviewing is a part of everyones job at Google. To help Googlers, theres an internal tool
called qDroid, where they can select the role, the matching attributes and they received an
email with suggested questions.

Four parameters likely to decide success at Google: General cognitive ability, leadership,
Googleyness and role related knowledge.

Not only does every interviewer have to access each of these attributes, there are at least
two interviewers who access them for each candidate.

Every interviewer sees a record of the interview scores they gave and whether those
candidates were eventually hired or not.

Some nutty things that have happened in interviews: Guy who brought his mom along. Guy
who forgot to wear a belt, so his pants kept falling off when he got up to go to the whiteboard
for a coding problem (recruiter gave him his own belt!)

Strong chances of you being interviewed by someone who will work for you. This reinforces
Googles nonhierarchical structure. Best candidates leave subs feeling inspired/excited to
learn from them.

Example of trusting new employees through and through from Day 1: In 2011, Nobel Peace
Prize laureates Desmond Tutu and the Dalai Lama were to have a historic meeting at Cape
Town. However, because of pressure from the Chinese govt, the African Congress did not
issue the Dalai Lama a visa. Loren Groves, whod just joined Google five days before the
incident, was sent to Tibet and then to SA, to arrange a Hangout session for the two men!
 Chapter 6: Let the inmates run the asylum

Eliminate status symbols

Only four visible, meaningful levels at Google: Individual contributor, Manager, Director and
Vice President + parallel track for technical people who remain individual contributors
throughout their careers.

Title should follow leadership

When the Google Investment Fund, a deferred compensation program which allowed people
to invest their bonus alongside the Google finance team, was introduced in 2011, it was
made available for everyone and not just senior level Googlers.

Former CFO Patrick would wear jeans and an orange backpack + zipped around the
campus on a cycle--shows senior leaders are just people.

Make decisions based on data

People Ops crunched data related to promotions and found:

- Working with senior people only had a small effect. (51% of all people nominated for
a promotion were promoted. For those who worked with much more senior people,
the rate was 54%, only marginally higher.)
- Product area doesnt affect promotion rate
- Bad feedback doesnt hurt your chances. Almost all people promoted have received
constructive feedback in the past. (Unless something is seriously wrong)
- Location doesnt matter either. Chances of promotion at MTV is same as elsewhere.

In 2010, 516 improvements were made to the search algo. One major improvement, called
Caffeine made results 50% fresher and faster.

Find ways for people to shape their work and the company

Examples of side projects: Chris Genteel helped minority-owned businesses get online
(turned into a full time job for him)
Ceasar Sengupta and a bunch of engineers on the Chrome team took up a 20% project to
apply Chromes design to an OS, and ended up creating the first prototype for
Chromebooks.
Paul Buchheit worked on Gmail (started as a 20% Project) for 2 years before the company
was finally convinced of launching it externally.
Googlegiest the spirit of Google is an annual survey of the 50K+ Googlers about their
experience at Google. Every manager with more than three respondents gets a customised
report, called MyGeist. Most share it with their team.

Waste Fix-it: Googlers suggest stamping out small practices that lead to wastage of money,
like more printers than required.

Effort to detach from work after hours: Dublin office created Dublin Goes Dark where
people were encouraged to leave work at 6 pm and stay offline; even had drop off locations
to turn in laptops to help with staying offline. (Very successful)
 Chapter 7: Why everyone hates performance
management and what we decided to do about it
Performance management as practiced by most companies has become bureaucratic and
rule based.

Satisfaction with perf managment was consistently one of the lowest rated areas in
Googlegeist study. Primary complaints: Took too long and wasnt transparent enough

Perf evaluation has always started with setting of goals. At the beginning of each quarter,
Larry sets Objectives and Key Results or OKRs for the company, based on which everyone
makes their personal OKRs too.

Until 2013, every Googler received a rating score/quarter on a 41-point rating scale from 1.0
(awful) to 5.0 (astounding).

In 2013, a pilot was launched for a new form of evaluation. 5 pt rating: needs improvement,
consistently meet expectations, exceeds expectations, strongly exceeds expectations and
superb. This has now been implemented throughout the company.

To avoid defensiveness, it makes sense to have annual reviews in November and then pay
discussions, a month later.

Chapter 8: The two tails

Every team has two tails: Best and least performing members of the team.

Most orgs miss the fact that people in the bottom tail represent the biggest opportunity to
improve perf and the top tail can teach you how to do that. Hence, important to study perf of
top tail and introduce training and focus on improvement accordingly.

Semiannual Upward feedback survey has questions like:

- My manager gives me actionable feedback points

- My manager doesnt micromanage
- My manager shows consideration for me as person
- My manager keeps the team focused on priorities
- My manager has technical expertise

(This survey in itself can be a checklist on how to be a better manager.)

Chapter 9: Building a learning institution

Build your faculty from within
At least one person/organisation who is an expert in some facet of the work you might want
to train others in.

Google Meng, employee #107 created a course Search Inside Yourself on mindfulness
thats an extremely popular course with Googlers, who are receptive to his teaching because
hes worked with the company for years and knows about the pressures that come with it.
He wrote a book and started an institute on the same lines while still at Google.

G2G program where Googlers enlist to teach one another. In 2013, 2200 classes were given
to 21000 Googlers by a G2G faculty of almost 3000 Googlers.

Some of the most popular courses: MindBody awareness, Presenting with charisma, Intro to
Programming for non-engineers, seven week mini MBA.

Tech Advisors (about 30 of them) offer confidential, one-on-one sessions for Googlers in
tech. Similarly there are Career Gurus (for career advice), Leadership Gurus (selected in
part through the Great Manager Awards), Sales Gurus and New Parent Gurus available for
advice.

Chapter 10: Pay unfairly

Wayne Rosing, the first VP of Engineering addressed Googlers a few weeks before the IPO
and said, If after we go public I see any lamborghinis in our parking lot, you better buy two
of them because Im going to take a baseball bat to the windshield of any parked here. (The
Google IPO created many millionaires, but the company wanted to retain its simplistic roots.)
Simplistic mindset can be seen in the minimalistic Google search page as well. In fact,
initially, many people landed up on the page and didnt enter anything for search. The team
later realised that users were waiting for the rest of the page to load, since they were used
to crowded and cluttered pages and not such a simple design. They then added a copyright
tag at the end of the page, mainly to signal This is the end. This solved the problem!

Pay unfairly
Fairness is when pay is commensurate with contribution. As a result, there ought to be
tremendous variance in pay for individuals. For example, cases where one person received
stock award of $10,000 and another working in the same area got $100,000. Also, many
cases of people at junior roles making a lot more than average performers at the senior
level.

Celebrate accomplishment, not compensation

3 months after the IPO, Google gave out its first Founders Awards. 2 teams received stock
awards worth $12 mil and in the following year 11 teams won $45 mil.

Absurdly, this incentive program made Googlers less happy! Because:

- Non tech people thought their field wasnt important enough to even be considered
for such awards
- Even among tech, people who thought they were working on less important
products felt they didnt stand a chance
- Even those whod won once felt theyd never receive another in the same area, so
they were keen on shifting around.
- Winners presumed that theyd get $1 mil per head, which wasnt always the case

Result: They shifted the awards from monetary to experiential, which had a huge positive
effect. (Trips, gadgets, etc)

Make it easy to spread the love

Peers often have a much better sense of whos really contributing to a projects success.

gThanks: tool for making it easy to recognise great work. (Lazlo prints the kudos received by
his team and puts them on a Wall of happy outside his office)

Peer bonus: Any employee can give any other Google a $175 cash award without
management oversight required. (Very rarely abused by Googlers)

Reward thoughtful failure

Google Wave, a product launched in 2009, that was meant to make interaction and
collaboration much easier. Despite an exception product team, it was a failure with a low
adoption rate. But because the team had taken a massive, calculated risk, they were
rewarded. (Important to support a culture of risk taking-- many of Waves features were
weaved into Google Drive including real time editing.)

Jeff Wuber, who runs the Ads engineering discussed notable bugs or mistakes during team
meetings in a What did we learn? session to make sure that bad news and the lessons
from it were spoken about as openly as possible.

Chapter 11: The best things in life are free (or almost
free)
Most people assume Google spends a fortune on providing perks to its employees, but thats
not true, aside from the cafes and the shuttles.

Encourage proficiency in professional and personal lives

On site services offered in (some) of the offices: ATM, bike repair, car wash, dry cleaning,
organic food and meat delivery, mobile haircuts and nail salons that pull up in huge buses
fitted with equipment. (These cost nothing because Google simply ties up with local
businesses and Googlers pay for these themselves.)

A community that spans Google and beyond

Google started Bring your parents to work day in 2012 with over 2000 and 500 parents in
the MTV and NY offices respectively. Helped them appreciate the impact their children are
having, even when those children are 50 years old.

Other programs
- gTalent (in house talent shows)
- Random Lunches (Googlers are set up with other people theyve never met to get to
know each other over lunch).
- Over 2000 email lists, groups and clubs in Google
- ERGs (Employee Resource Groups) including the American Indian Network,
Gayglers, Greyglers (for older Googlers), Women@Google and so on.
- 52 Culture Clubs that bring Googlers together for events. (Pride parades, family
health days, out reach programs for minorities and abused sections of the society,
food donation drives etc)
- Advanced Leadership Labs, a three day program for seniors leaders spanning
geographies, ethnic backgrounds and business functions
- Talks@Google and Tech Talks with authors, tech people, business leaders
(President Obama, George RR Martin, Lady Gaga, Muhammed Yunus and David
Bekham)

Fuel innovation

Google offices, with micro kitchens, break out areas etc are designed to initiate casual
collisions to spark conversations and ideas between people.

Some of these programs are now catching up with other companies. Twitter, FB and Yahoo
all have versions of TGIF, Dropbox and LinkedIn started their Take your parents to work
day.

Be there when your people need you the most

Like every other company, Google provides life insurance but the company felt it was never
enough to help the surviving partner of the Googler whod passed away. So in 2011, it was
decided that in such a situation, the partner would immediately receive any unvested stock
and get 50% of the Googlers salary to the survivor for the next 10 years. In case there were
children in the family, theyd receive an additional $1000/month until they were 19.
Changed maternity leave policies in 2011. 5 months paid leave and new parents would
receive their full salary, bonus and stock while on leave. Plus, a $500 bonus after the
delivery just to make life a little easier.
 Chapter 12: Nudge..a lot
A nudge is a small, simple signal or reinforcement that hopes to alter behaviour. Its not a
mandate, but an intervention to influence choice. Most profitable line in English is, Would
you like fries with that? (Influences people to get side orders)

Googles experiments with nudges:

- To ensure onboarding, managers were sent an email checklist the Sunday before
Nooglers joined their team with the following items:
Have a role-responsibility discussion
Match your Noogler with a peer buddy
Help your Noogler build a social network
Set up onboarding check in once a month for your Nooglers first 6 months
Encourage open discussion

The Nooglers whose managers got this nudge onboarded 25% faster than their
counterparts through just ONE email.

- What about Nooglers themselves? During orientation they were advised to:
Ask a LOT of questions
Schedule 1:1s with managers
Get to know your team
Actively solicit feedback
Accept all challenges

Two weeks later, they were sent a follow up email with the checklist. Nooglers who
got this nudge were more likely to ask for feedback and become productive faster.

- Google faced a problem of employees signing up for courses and then failing to
attend. This was unfair for those in the waiting list. After experimentation with four
different types of emails, Google found that an appeal to the identity (reminding
enrollees to be Googley and do the right thing by unregistering in case they couldnt
attend the course) increased unenrollment and attendance.

- To encourage healthy eating habits, Google tried 3 interventions: providing

information to promote healthy eating, limiting options to healthy options and nudges.
Nudges worked the best. Healthier snacks were put in open containers at eye level
while candy was stacked on lower shelves in opaque containers. (Proportion of fat
decreased by 40%)
 Chapter 13: Its not all rainbows and unicorns

Price of transparency

During a TGIF, Eric pointed to the blueprint of one of Googles first hardware products,
Google Mini (B2B product) and mentioned that it had been leaked by a Googler, whod be
been fired. He went on to say that Googlers were given access to a lot of information and
were trusted to keep it to themselves.

Reject entitlement

Cases of people stocking up on water bottles and granola bars from the counters for their
trekking trips or packing food to take home over the weekend.

Meatless Monday was an initiative where some cafes in the office stopped serving meat for
one month in 2010, as an experiment. It didnt go down too well with a vocal group of
Googlers. One group hosted a barbecue in protest (funny and clever way of protest) but
others complained in a less polite manner with feedback like Stop trying to tell me how to
live my life. Seriously stop this shit or Ill go to Microsoft, Twitter or Facebook where they
dont f*ck with us. This comment was shared at a TGIF and the audience was appalled.

Side effect of untrammeled freedom is that there a lot of ideas, which leads to a lot of
products. Some of which dont work out have to be discontinued. List includes: Google
Lively, Google Audio Ads, Google Labs, Google Health etc.