Tuesday, December 06, 2005

How Google Gets the Most out of their Knowledge Workers

Eric Schmidt and Hal Varian talk about "Google: Ten Golden Rules"

Getting the most out of knowledge workers will be the key to business success for the next quarter century. Here's how we do it at google.
The following is a cut-and-paste point-format summary:

Hire by committee
Cater to their every need
Pack them in (put team members within a few feet of each other)
Make coordination easy
Eat your own dog food
Encourage creativity
Strive to reach consensus
Don't be evil.
Data drive decisions
Communicate effectively.

There are several problems that we (and other companies like us) face.
One is "techno arrogance."
A related problem is the not-invented-here syndrome.
Another issue that we will face in the coming years is the maturation of the company, the industry and our work force
A final issue is making sure that as Google grows, communication procedures keep pace with our increasing scale.
At Google, operations are not just an afterthought: they are critical to the company's success, and we want to have just as much effort and creativity in this domain as in new product development.

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