How Google works

March 4, 2017

One hour video of "How Google Works"

Take down some notes:

- sharing stories about hiring "smart creatives," banning "knaves," avoiding evil, and fostering a culture of innovation.

Hippo - highest paid people opinion, manage people 12, not good, the manager will be a hippo! 7 is maximum.

Hire what kind of people (19:53/ 1:13:41)? Eric said, people love what they do. Intense (?) people, 9:00am - 5:00pm that is for government job.

Fight for divas (24:26/ 1:13:41)? Most successful team are small, 3 or 4 people. Small control, allow knaves to small team, steal other people work, do not do the work, exile the nave. Nave density, no one wants to work here. Help divas, brilliant person, difficult to work with, in small environment fight for divas. Those people drive culture forward, that is not good enough. Ultimately people become famous in the industry. Like Steve Jobs.

The article - take some notes

Detail see the article about Divas. (Google search: )

Cosgrove asked them to elaborate on the idea: "exile the knaves, but fight for the divas."

Rosenberg said maintaining Google's collaborative culture requires weeding out and getting rid of the knaves: Employees who lack integrity, who are jealous of their peers, take credit for others' work, and think only of themselves. "Nice humble engineers have a way of becoming insufferable when they think they are the sole inventors of the world's next big thing," they write in their book. "This is quite dangerous, as ego creates blind spots... Nip crazy in the bud."

Divas, on the other hand, display "high exceptionalism," Rosenberg said. If the divas are brilliant and doing a good job, they should be valued and allowed to do their jobs. "As long as ... the divas' achievements outweigh the collateral damage caused by their diva ways, you should fight for them."

"They will pay off your investment by doing interesting things," they write. "...Remember that Steve Jobs was one of the greatest business divas the world has ever known!"

On hiring: (copy from the article)

Google, a $50 billion company with more than 50,000 employees around the world, is legendary for its unconventional hiring process. For every opening, Google receives at least 1,000 applications. "The good news is that we have computers to do the initial vetting," Schmidt said. "You can figure out if someone's going to be a good fit in five interviews."

Google looks for people with technology capacity, business acumen and curiosity. "You can't teach passion, but you can teach just about everything else," Rosenberg said.  "Without passion and curiosity, they're not going to have the passion to attack big challenges."

Schmidt said he uses "the LAX test" (picking that airport for maximum discomfort, he explains): "You're stuck at the LAX airport" with the candidate. "After six hours, are you still interested in talking to them? Passion or not, that's a very tough test."

"Don't be evil":

Their 2004 initial public offering letter included the unusual motto "Don't be evil." Schmidt said the phrase sets a high standard and acts as an internal control to make sure that they believe in what they're doing.

He recalled one meeting where the company was considering a new and potentially lucrative way of mixing ads and news, when one engineer pounded on the table and said, "We can't do that, it would be evil." The room got quiet, and the proposed advertising change was reconsidered and rejected.

Although Google has been criticized for it, the company is well known for being open and transparent in its communications. "Most companies are not nearly as open with emails, intranet and sharing information with employees,"