Some interesting thoughts from a new Google engineer, Things I’ve learned at Google so far

I think he overestimates the lack of central planning, still it is another interesting view of Google.

Related: Eric Schmidt on Management at Google – Google: Ten Golden Rules – The Myth of the Genius Programmer

CEO Eric Schmidt Reveals ‘Centerpiece’ Of Google’s 2010 Strategy, speaking at the White House jobs summit.

I continue to own Google and have it in my 12 stocks for 10 years portfolio.

Related: Google Exceeded Planned Spending on Personnel – Eric Schmidt on Management at Google – Meeting Like Google – Google Should Stay True to Their Management Practices

Google does a great job of using statistical and engineering principles to improve. It is amazing how slow we are to adopt new ideas but because we are it provides big advantages to companies like Google that use concepts like design of experiments, experimenting quickly and often… while others don’t. Look Inside a 1,024 Recipe Multivariate Experiment

via: @hexawise – My brother has created a software application to provide much better test coverage with far fewer tests using the same factorial designed experiments ideas my father worked with decades ago (and yet still far to few people use).

Related: Combinatorial Testing for Software – Statistics for Experimenters – Google’s Website Optimizer allows for multivariate testing of your website. – Using Design of Experiments

Nice talk on fear of looking foolish. The speakers discuss the idea that visibility is good. Don’t hide. Make everything visible and the benefit from many people’s ideas. The talk focuses on software development but is true for any work.

“criticism is not evil” – Very true. “At Google we are not allowed to submit code until there is code review.” At the bottom line they are repeating Deming’s ideas: improve the system – people are not the problem, bad systems are the problem. Iterate quickly.

Related: 10x Productivity Difference in Software Development – The Software Engineering Manager’s Lament – Respect for People, Understanding Psychology

Google Wave is a new tool for communication and collaboration on the web, coming later this year. They are developing this as an open access project. The creative team is lead by the creators for Google Maps (brothers Lars and Jens Rasmussen). A wave is equal parts conversation and document. People can communicate and work together with richly formatted text, photos, videos, maps, and more. You really have to watch to understand what it is.

This is a long webcast (1 hour and 20 minutes) and likely will be best only for those interested in internet technology solutions. But it also provides useful insight into how Google is managing the creation of new tools. But the ideas are not explicit (the demo was meant to present the new product Google Wave, not explain the thought behind producing useful technology solutions), so you have to think about how what they are doing can apply in other situations.

For software developer readers they also highly recommended the Google Web Development Kit, which they used heavily on this project. They also have a very cool context sensitive spell checker that can highlight misspelled words that are another dictionary word but not right in the context used (about 44:30 in the webcast). And they discuss using Wave to manage bug tracking and manage information about dealing with bugs (@ 1 hour 4 min point).

Very cool stuff. The super easy blog interaction is great. And the user experience with notification and collaborative editing seems excellent. The playback feature to view changes seems good though that is still an area I worry about on heavily collaborative work. Hopefully they let you see like all change x person made, search changes…

Related: Eric Schmidt on Management at Google – Joel Spolsky Webcast on Creating Social Web Resources – Great Marissa Mayer Webcast on Google Innovation – Google Should Stay True to Their Management Practices – Amazon Innovation

Secret of Googlenomics: Data-Fueled Recipe Brews Profitability

Google continues to make bold moves putting faith in their ability to find innovative solutions that others reject as impossible. It is a challenging but interesting path to success, for them, at least.

Related: Google Should Stay True to Their Management Practices – Google’s Answer to Filling Jobs Is an Algorithm – The Google Way: Give Engineers Room – Google Website Optimizer – Google: Experiment Quickly and Often – posts on innovation in management

I believe in Google’s past, present and future. They have shown a great ability to ignore the short term focus that dominates (and kills success) of so many companies today. I am happy to invest in Google for the long term.

This current reaction to the economic crisis, is one of many times Google can be seen to be making significant changes to adapt based on market conditions and the results of their experiments and experiences. Google’s management in general and the 3 leaders continue to practice a management style based on an engineering perspective while so many others practice the style Scott Adams has pilloried in the pointy haired boss.

The thought and execution of Page, Brin and Schmidt (and others: Marissa Mayer) is at a different level than that of most other executives. Skepticism is wise. But I believe Google continues to have exceptional execution and focus on long term innovation.

The biggest risk I see, for them, is they become too focused on the short term and lose their ability to take advantage of the great opportunities available by focusing on long term success. Google is in a position where they are not forced to abandon long term plans due to cash flow problems. The only decision for Google should be whether something makes long term sense or not. If they are recalibrating and deciding they were being too lax in certain areas (without long term justification) then I am fine with changes. If though they are reacting to short term market conditions that is a big mistake.

Google Gears Down for Tougher Times

Bad idea, short term thinking. Don’t drive business practices based on short term earning releases. If the idea is not worth 20 people long term fine, don’t do it. If it is, do it. The lack of cash that would force many companies to abandon promising efforts is not an issue for Google. They have plenty of cash and are generating much more every day.

Bad idea; quotas are a sign of management abdicating responsibility. Quotas are destructive to success. Pay for performance focuses employees on meeting targets instead of the best interests of the company. Quotas are destructive to constancy of purpose.
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• “it [managing better] starts with listening, it has to do with curiosity“
• “everything has to be based on some fact”
• “It’s only about the people.” [respect for people is critical, Google really acts as though the people are their most important asset - John].
• “What is the number 1 goal of the company? It is end user happiness with search. What is the number 2 goal? It’s end user happiness with advertising. What is the number 3 goal? The construction of the Google network of partners to effectuate the first two. What is the number 4 goal? To grow and scale the business… You will eventually get extraordinary returns for your shareholders and maximize advertiser happiness if all those things happen… There are a lot of business executives that get confused on what the goal is and they think that shareholder value is the goal. Shareholder value is a consequence of the goal.”

Related: Eric Schmidt Podcast on Google Innovation and Entrepreneurship – Interview with Google CEO Eric Schmidt – Innovation at Google – Google: Experiment Quickly and Often – Marissa Mayer Webcast on Google Innovation – Google Management by Gary Hamel – Larry Page and Sergey Brin Interview Webcast

Google does great things and makes good decisions most often. However a recent move on their part has ended very lamely. As part of what their 10th anniversary celebration they provided a search of the 2001 index (the oldest index they could find to search now). This was extremely cool.

Now if you go to find it so you can try it out you will be disappointed. Search for it on Google you will find a link to Google Search 2001 which gives you a page that says: “The page – www.google.com/search2001.html – does not exist.” Is it amazingly lame that Google took the search down, has it has the first result on searches, and has no explanation on that page of what it was about.

It would be cool for them to leave it up (it was interesting). And I would think they could make a great deal of money showing ads (I can’t remember if they did show ads). But not leaving a page at that address (which was linked to over 95,000 times) explaining what the page did and that it is now offline is very lame. 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.

This move shows Google in a similar light as Gap when managers shut down the Gap’s web site for days (in 2005). Google failed when exiting the video business (DRM issues), then realized their mistake and recovered. The fix for this would take all of 1 hour. Someone just has to put up a page discussing what the page was for and that the search has been discontinued.

But really they should explore if it is better to just make it live – maybe it doesn’t but I would certainly want to look into that option. If not, I would put up some interesting results from the experiment (though if the choice is just a 1 hour solution or nothing then just put up a page in 1 hour) and link to commentary about the search and interesting things people found. This would be an interesting task for an intern, or someone else, and could provide an interesting and popular page. but most importantly at least not breaking 95,000 links (plus all those who go to the page from search results pages) is the minimum Google should do.

Related: web pages should live forever – Search Share Data Checking the ACSI – Ways for Google to Improve (more…)

The power of small teams by Avi Muchnick

Amazon and Google do a lot with small teams and I think they have it right. I have worked on small IT teams for several years now and find it great. Combine with agile management methods small teams allow for great focus (you are naturally guided toward appropriate project sizes instead of huge monster projects), great results and joy in work. I have no desire to work in large teams.

Related: Team Handbook – Measuring and Managing Performance in Organizations – Keeping Track of Improvement Opportunities – Curious Cat Management Articles

You can accomplish a great deal by just talking to people. Google Public Relations:

I did not really expect it, but the next day I got a call from Jeffrey Korn at Google California. He explained that he was the one responsible for building the Google Bookmarks and Google Web History tools. The problem with my extension was something I hadn’t imagined: a scaling problem. Hehe, Google had scaling problems .

The gBrain extension creates a lot of bookmarks. Several thousands a month. And the Google bookmarks system was never made with this amount in mind. What made things worse (and I didn’t knew that), the bookmarks are connected to the normal web search. Whenever you use the web search, it checks it against your Google bookmarks. You can easily imagine what problems can come up when you have a several 10 or even 100 thousands of bookmarks…

Jeffery also made a few suggestions how the extension could be changed to make use of their Web history service instead of the bookmarks system. This would avoid the scaling problems. I may consider it some day.

But why am I telling this? Because I’m amazed how Google handled this. Instead of just blocking my extension at their side, or sending me a cease and desist letter they contacted me and asked.

Good for Google. I do find it a bit funny they had a lawyer contact the guy but still Google’s reaction was much better than most companies would be. Companies like Google, Amazon, Lego, New York Times are taking advantage of technology to leverage community efforts to improve the value of their service to customers. This is an important innovation management needs to acknowledge and manage. Or you can be like the poorly managed journal publishers or music industry that are destroying their organizations futures.

Related: Funding Google Gadget Development – Innovative Marketing Podcast (Lego) – Innovation at Google

Deming’s 14 points (for software development) by Jamie Dinkelacker (Geo/Maps Engineering Program Manager at Google Inc. Focus on lean principles and agile practices for software development):

A good read. Also a good blog on management improvement ideas and software development (though not very active). See my Deming on Management resource where I try to explain what Dr. Deming actually said and meant and dispel some misconceptions.

Related: Dr. Deming’s 14 Points – Deming’s Ideas at Markey’s Audio Visual – Lean, Toyota and Deming for Software Development – Google: Ten Golden Rules

Awhile back I wrote about why I didn’t think the American Customer Satisfaction Index claim that Yahoo beat Google for customer satisfaction was evidence of a broken indicator. Well here is another indicator, but this time it puts Google clearly in 1st place, while Yahoo has been improving: Search Engines: Intense Competition Drives Better User Experiences

Google still has plenty of room to improve (for one example, their blog search is still very poor). And Yahoo is better than many people realize. But I think Google is still clearly better from my experience and looking at the available data (Google keeps gaining market share for one import piece of data).

Related: Search Share Data, Checking the ACSI – Meeting Like Google – Improve Google

Another interesting experiment from Google: Using Prediction Markets to Track Information Flows: Evidence from Google

Interesting paper. I would guess most readers of this blog won’t be able to apply prediction markets to there workplace in the short term but never-the-less I find the paper interesting.

Related: Management is Prediction – Google Experiments Quickly and Often – Secrets of the World’s Best Companies

The Google Way: Give Engineers Room

Related: Google Software Engineering – Agile Software Development – Agile Management – Managing Innovation – Larry Page and Sergey Brin Webcast – Google: Ten Golden Rules

Last month, in a long post criticizing the ACSI I took issue with, among other things, the implications being drawn from an ACSI rating. The ACSI rating of Yahoo was higher than that of Google (though statistically insignificantly so). Anyway, here is some new data on search volumes of the leading providers:

Top 5 Search Providers for August 2007, Ranked by Searches (U.S.)

Source: Nielsen//NetRatings MegaView Search

So Google grew 39.8% year over year and Yahoo grew 8.9% year over year. Google now has 53.6% of the total searches. Granted this is limited data but it seems to confirm that Google is in fact continuing to increase their lead in search volume. Practically all evidence seems to support this belief – the ACSI seems to be the exception. Which might indicate great insight provided by the ACSI that everyone else is missing. Or it might show ACSI results are doing a poor job of providing a useful measure of customer satisfaction with search engines. I go with the second.

Related: posts on using data effectively – Website Data – Understanding Data – posts on Google management – Curious Cat Management Improvement Search

Yahoo Mail Innovates, Gmail Stagnates

To me Yahoo is really continually improving the service, not innovating. Still an interesting exploration of visible improvement.

Related: Kaizen Online – Kaizen definition -Innovation Examples – Google Innovation webcast –

Google Video sold digital videos that were controlled by Digital Rights Management DRM (so the purchaser didn’t buy something they bought the right to view the digital media according to a set of constraints. I, and many others find these DRM deals a bad deal for customers. I think Google realized that DRM made their Google Video a bad business (though maybe they decided it was a bad business for other reasons).

Well Google’s original method of existing the business left many people upset – with good reason I think. Google has wisely reacted to that feedback by improving the exit strategy (including full refunds and the ability to play videos purchased for the next 6 months). This improvement is evident for customers but also is an improvement from the perspective of the other stakeholders too. An update on Google Video feedback

Related: Dell Listening to Customer – other companies refuse to listen – Google: Good Service not Arbitrage – Dell, Reddit and Customer Focus – Discover Card Dis-service

Ok, this is one of those posts you might want to ignore or you might enjoy. Before blogs there is little chance this would reach you. But I am tired of seeing the American Customer Satisfaction Index (ACSI) promoted as if it were some encouragement for better management when all it seems to do to me is encourage superficial, non data based claims. And since it my blog I can rant if I feel like it.

ACSI: Flat Customer Satisfaction Suggests Continued Weak Consumer Spending

That is the title of the news release. Are they kidding!! They think a flat American Customer Satisfaction Index (ACSI) reading is going to lead to weak consumer spending? I doubt it. I really doubt it. What data, or theory is that based on? Jeez this whole thing just makes me crazy. Trying to use a index to promote the “importance of quality principles” (ASQ is one of the “sponsors” of this effort) and customer focus in this way – ARGH. It does the opposite – showing people how to misuse numbers. How to overreact to variation. How to compare one dot to another dot and make claims from those 2 dots. I am sure I will make mistakes in my statements but the ACSI has bugged me since it was started with the way it ignores sound quality practices and promotes the opposite of what people like Dr. Deming taught.

I suppose it it possible their was a statistically significant change in the actual consumer satisfaction in favor of the Big Three versus Asian Manufacturers, though I doubt it. But fine, lets say it isn’t just random variation. And heck for a sentence or two lets even accept this measure of “satisfaction” is even meaningful. Why would making more cars mean your quality is going to slip? This seems like trying to say something about numbers when you don’t really have anything to say. Toyota will make more cars next year, most likely (unless there is a large recession), so is your prediction that their ASCI is likely to slip? Please read Practice and Malpractice in Management Research v 6.0 by Paul R. Carlile and Clayton M. Christensen.

Making a prediction and testing it out would at least be applying some semblance of the PDSA cycle (granted I probably shouldn’t even bring that up as it is such a stretch from a what PDSA really is) – but the concept of PDSA is that it is a learning cycle. You make a prediction based on your theory and then test out your theory. The claim is making more cars means your quality is going to slip (which in the context I take them to mean is equivalent to the ASCI number slipping – otherwise the quote is basically a non-sequitur)?
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Marissa Mayer speech at Stanford on innovation at Google (23 minutes, 26 minutes question and answers). She leads the product management efforts on Google’s search products- web search, images, groups, news, Froogle, the Google Toolbar, Google Desktop, Google Labs, and more. She joined Google in 1999 as Google’s first female engineer. Excellent speech. Highly recommended. 9 ideas:

(inside these are Marissa’s comments) [inside these are my comments]

1. Ideas come from anywhere (engineers, customers, managers, executives, external companies – that Google acquires)
2. Share everything you can (very open culture)
3. You’re Brilliant. We’re Hiring [Google Hiring]
4. A license to pursue dreams (Google 20% time)
5. Innovation not instant perfection (iteration – experiment quickly and often)
6. Data is apolitical [Data Based Decision Making - this is true but as an operating principle requires people that really understand data. See: Data can't lie.
7. Creativity loves Constraints [process improvement and innovation]
8. Users not money [the opposite of what business school's teach business case]
9. Don’t kill projects morph them

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