Should you land an interview soon, here’s a question you might hear that’s not out of left field: “What’s the last book you read?” Take the time to make it The Google Way: How One Company Is Revolutionizing Management As We Know It, by Bernard Girard.
What can Google teach you about better managing your career? Start by learning from its success, as well as what makes its employees successful and happy. Namely:
- Show you’re the best: In Google’s case, this is most often demonstrated by having an advanced degree before you’re hired. Here’s why: Developers or engineers who stick it out to gain a Master’s or Ph.D. – especially when times are good and the job offers have no doubt been rolling in – demonstrate that: a) they’re not in it for the money, b) they’re extremely motivated, c) they value the quality of their work, and d) they have the psychological wherewithal required to work solo and deliver results. (Furthermore, Google at least is happy to hire overqualified people. It may promote them several times their first year.)
- Learn from your interviews: Google often asks questions that are actual business issues, so as a job candidate, you’d do well to listen carefully (or ask this question yourself). One famous example: Google’s director of research asked Amin Saberi, a job candidate, how he’d improve search results. After returning to Georgia Tech and discussing it with his thesis advisor, Saberi hit upon factoring an advertiser’s daily budget into search rankings. “Saberi and his colleagues wrote the algorithm and filed a patent,” notes Girard. And then made a presentation at Google. (By the way, Saberi is now at Stanford.)
- Empower users: As a developer, know how you can involve more users or customers. Google helps cultivate its growth through online communities, by giving away APIs that work with its services. As Girard notes, “Developers can use these APIs to extend Google gadgets, like Google Maps, building mashups that combine data from different sources to create new applications that solve real problems, and bring traffic to Google.”
- Don’t scare users: Girard lauds Google’s approach to its products: if you like one but hate another, you don’t have to use it. (Contrast this with Microsoft Office.) Furthermore, Google takes a “Swiss Army knife approach” to its products: It doesn’t show them to you all at once (here, contrast the Yahoo! and Google search engine splash pages). Instead, it hides complexity and focuses on small, discrete modules. (Girard also notes: “The reduced complexity of Google’s applications also reduces maintenance costs, which typically average 40 percent of an application’s cost application during its lifecycle.”)
- Find time to experiment: Google has famously adapted a technique used in 3M’s research centers: the 15-percent rule, which refers to the amount of work time an employee has to pursue their own work (and which led to Scotch Masking Tape and Post-It Notes).
Need a way to sell the above to your manager? Try this:
- Cite the numerous innovations produced by just the 20-percent rule, such as Google News, Orkut and Google toolbar
- Mention how having time to work on experimental but job-related projects makes you more happy with (and yes, beholden to) your employer
- Stress the high-technology requirement for unconventional thinking, and how companies that stifle such innovation do themselves a disservice. For example, Girard notes the response that Hewlett-Packard management gave to Steve Wozniak, co-founder of Apple Computer, when he proposed developing a personal computer: “Don’t waste your time.”
Finally, of course, take the above with the grain of salt: Just because Google is the scaled-up success story of the “double-naughts” doesn’t mean it will be for the 2010s. “Let’s not forget that Google is not invincible,” says Girard.
Tags: Career Management, Google
