There are many books which talks about Google on the market. The reason of choosing "The Google Way" is simply because of the good review from Amazon. But after reading it through, I found I made the right choice and it's worthwhile to read.
In Girard's book, he analysed Google in 360 degree. From left to right, he pointed out not only the history of Google, but he also wrote about the future, the risk and challenges which based on the fact that Google is potentially facing. From top to bottom, he not only talked about how do they make the profit by marketing themselves in public, but also mentioned how does Google manage their internal resources and strategy planning.
Some of the content that I, or maybe many people, already know, for example, the history of Google which created by Larry and Sergey, they only recruit the best people whom should have PhD, the 20 percent rule which allow their employee to do their own stuff, etc... But I wouldn't know that in detail, for example, in that 20 percent rule, although an employee is allowed to use 20 percent of their time to do their own stuff, it doesn't mean that you can do something completely not related to Google. Under that 20 percent rule, the time that an employee use to invent anything should feed it back to the company. And coworkers will constantly review each other's work. By doing this, it will implicitly create competition between each other, as a great idea will earn respect from colleagues, or even the company will promote the idea to the public.
As a developer like me, do I want to work for Google? At this moment, the answer is yes and no.
The yes is because I was fascinated by those genius who work for Google. I'd like to work with those great people, they are possibly the smartest group of people in the world. And I also like to see, learn, going through the Google process in order to improve myself.
The no is because the stress is given by the 20 percent rule. If I want to create something that I like, I wouldn't want to be rejected by Google after putting lots of effort inside it (as Google will shutdown anything which is not interested by the group). And if I don't have good idea, will I get sacked or look down by my colleagues?
Anyway, for those who are interested about the book, there are a couple of review that it's worthwhile to look at before you buy the book:
1. http://www.amazon.com/Google-Way-Company-Revolutionizing-Management/dp/1593271840
2. http://millionchimpanzees.blogspot.com/2009/05/google-way-how-one-company-is.html
Anything on Google's "do no evil" motto?
ReplyDeleteIn Girard's book, he did not explicitly mention anything about that kind of motto. But he mentioned that Google provide whole bunch of free service, like search, map, blog, etc... Even all the new experimental services are free for users. So in terms of user point of view, Google does good things. But in another way, in my point of view, it seems Google is trying to own people's life. If you think about it, Google analyses user searching behavior. They could also look at your blog message, calendar, email, even instant messenger, rss reader, website hosting that all sorts of online, daily activities in order to customize the relevant things or search result to you. So the more services you use, the more they understand you. Does it mean they are trying to do evil things? or to be more precise, will they do evil things?
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