Google: Ten Golden Rules by Eric Schmidt and Hal Varian:
At google, we think business guru Peter Drucker well understood how to manage the new breed of “knowledge workers.” After all, Drucker invented the term in 1959. He says knowledge workers believe they are paid to be effective, not to work 9 to 5, and that smart businesses will “strip away everything that gets in their knowledge workers’ way.” Those that succeed will attract the best performers, securing “the single biggest factor for competitive advantage in the next 25 years.”
Google really is doing things differently. One way you see it is that some of those used to being the most powerful players complain that they don’t get respect at Google, at Google the engineers rule. Um, maybe they shouldn’t complain too loud, maybe the reason Google is doing better is they focus on the Gemba (where value is added to the customer).
Googling For Gold:
The suits inside Google don’t fare much better than the outside pros. Several current and former insiders say there’s a caste system, in which business types are second-class citizens to Google’s valued code jockeys. They argue that it could prove to be a big challenge in the future as Google seeks to maintain its growth. They deem the corporate development team as underpowered in the company, with engineers and product managers tending to carry more clout than salesmen and dealmakers.
Truthfully Google is a special case. Still managers should learn from Google’s success. Google isn’t afraid to take risks and try things that others are won’t. It seems to be working pretty well.
July 16th, 2006 at 11:36 pm
[...] So funding research that hires scientists and engineers, and provides many benefits to the economy, can make a great deal of sense. The belief in this is why so many countries are focusing on improving their science and engineering capabilities. Regulating salary levels though doesn’t seem like a reasonable option to me. Hopefully companies like Google that value engineers above all else will be copied as the marketplace realizes the market has systemically been under-valuing creative knowledge workers like engineers and overpaying others. [...]
April 11th, 2007 at 7:30 am
[...] the importance of letting engineers pursue customer delight. It seems to be working pretty well, even if some don’t like the primacy of engineers at Google[...]
June 21st, 2007 at 11:57 am
“two of the masterminds behind Google Maps and several other Google products, have joined the firm as “Entrepreneurs in Residence.” This gives them paid positions to hang out at Benchmark’s offices on Silicon Valley’s Sand Hill Road and think through starting a business…”
March 2nd, 2008 at 7:07 pm
“I’m never going to leave Hewlett-Packard. It’s my job for life. It’s the best company because it’s so good to engineers.” Said by Steve Wozniak prior to HP declining to work with the personal computer the Woz created - at which point he went off and founded Apple with Steve Jobs.
March 7th, 2008 at 7:24 am
Honda allows its engineers wide latitude in interpreting its corporate mission. “We’ve been known to study the movement of cockroaches and bumblebees to better understand mobility…
November 2nd, 2008 at 3:10 pm
Breaking 95,000 links is bad enough for some pointy haired boss that believes the internet is made up of tubes but for a well run internet company to do that is pitiful…