Management Toolkit

Working in a Google culture

Tags:
Flat Organisation,
Happiness Survey,
Commitment Level,
Perk

Elinor Mills CNET News

Published: 01 May 2007 12:20 BST

...is adaptable or flexible, but it's certainly going to show someone's thought process and reasoning, the way they can rationalise a true answer to something. Obviously, there's no right answer, but we're just trying to figure out how people think and the kind of the steps that they take.

When I'm doing the interview myself I always start by telling them that we will try to assess how successful they are going to be at the company and how much they are going to enjoy it and how much they are going to thrive. We know that they're qualified, that it's likely they're capable of doing the job, because they've gone through screening processes, but there are other questions we're trying to ask people, around preferences, past experiences and areas they've really excelled in.

I've heard about a happiness survey at Google. Can you tell me more about that?
The past few years we've been doing a happiness survey as part of our annual global company survey. Four or five years ago, Larry and Sergey wanted to find out how happy people are and what it's going to take to keep them working at the company.

We're trying to figure out how committed people are to the company, what's causing that commitment level to be high or low, what makes a difference to them and their management and direct managers. The results ended up being centred a lot on career development and growth. So career development is more of a focus than giving more stock options or increasing salaries.

What do you think is the most appreciated perk? What do you get the most positive feedback on?
It would have to be the food. We have some type of lunch in every field office right now, every Google office. In places where we have room to have a cafeteria, we have our own and we hire our own chefs. But, in many of those places, we just bring in catered food. Here in Mountain View, we started having the cafés back in '99. And the reason why it is such an incredible perk is it keeps people on campus, it's all organic, it's healthy. At the headquarters we have breakfast, lunch and dinner.

How are you dealing with the possibility that there will be an exodus of people leaving when their options fully vest after four years?
Well, we have people now that are hitting their fourth year, actually, last year and this year. So, we are tracking it and watching for when different people are coming up each month and we're starting to touch base with them, asking: how are you doing? Are you working on something interesting? Do you like what you're doing? If not, what is one or two things that would make your life better here or increase your commitment level?

So we're trying the personal-touch approach right now because, for many of these people, providing more money or stock isn't really going to be the key driver to keeping them at Google. So to answer your question: yes, we're definitely concerned about it and we will continue to be concerned about it, probably forever.

So how is the transferable stock-option programme going [which lets employees sell their vested options in an online auction and make money now, rather than risk making less if the stock price falls]?
It's too early to comment. People are excited that we're trying it, though, and the idea has been well-received.

What's the most fun or crazy part of your job?
I think planning the ski trips over the years has been crazy. We've done Google-wide ski trips since 1999. Different groups go up and we spend the night and there's a lot of team-building and bonding. Those have actually been the most memorable and actually the most fun [events].

What have we not covered that you think is germane to what you do at Google?
I think for any company that is growing as quickly as we are, the work-life balance component is actually quite high. We don't typically have early-morning meetings or late-night meetings. And people are welcome to do things via conference call at home and we pay for people to connect from home. We have a good paternity-leave policy where the dads can take off a couple of weeks when their spouse has had a child and we pay for people's meals when they have new babies for the first few weeks.

We've all heard about the ability for people to bring their dogs to work. And you have such a litany of perks and benefits and things that would encourage people to stay or even join. And we have a benefit where we reimburse people up to $5,000 (£2,505) if they buy a hybrid or electric car. And we have shuttle service [for commuters] to and from San Francisco, the East Bay, Santa Cruz.