Work Culture at Google - An Inside Story

I heard it in the grapevine about the work culture at Google. Read on.

Every time I visit there I am amazed how pre-bubble the environment
is. It’s like nothing every happend. And it doesn’t feel like
being on the campus of a fortune 500 company, more like a college
campus loaded with free thinkers.

Truely, the average age there must be 28 years. Even at 43 I felt
very old and out of place. The management structure is as bizzare
as the inteview process - a hugely flat organization with a
“unique” methode for conflict solving. I’ve been told that as
many as 150 people all direct report to one manager.

They are really concerned that you can be a self starter. As my
friend put it, if you run into a problem you couldn’t foresee
while completing a task, you should be able to focus on that
problem without intervention or pausing the entire task hoping
someone else will help you. “It’s like college, you have to
be able to problem solve on your own, not simply stop and
hope another team member can fix it for you”.

If you don’t have a degree, but they really want the skill
set you have and hire you, don’t expect to being anything
more than a second class citizen. They will keep you
in that position as long as you perform well, but moving into
other area’s in google are nearly impossible. They are supreme
degree bigots. My buddies tell me not to even bother interviewing
with them if you don’t have a degree, or are still working on
one currently. They’re serious.

For problem conflict with another team member, they handle
things very differently as well. For instance, let say you
a three others are working on interdependant modules to a
peice of code and have a deadline for beta in a couple of
weeks. You’ve completed your module to a point where you
are now dependant on another who is now the bottleneck in the
project. You cannot simply go to this person’s office and
ask for status, nor can you pressure them to meet their
deadlines, nor do you go to your manager. You
proceed to the Project manager and tell him/her of your
delimma and *they* will speak to your bottlenecking co-worker
for you.

If the co-worker tells the PM they’ve discoverd a ‘new feature’
or function they wanted to add and has intentionally slipped,
the PM will return to you and tell you to wait.. yes, that’s
right, WAIT… and in the meantime go find something else to
work on (remember that self-starter comment?). You cannot
personally bring pressure on the lagging team memember, you
are stuck until the other person finishes on ‘their schedule’.

They know that anyone who’s been in the industry working for
someone like HP, IBM, etc. will find their methods alien,
so it no surprise that they screen canidates the way they
do. They *want* college students, not seasoned, structured
industry workers. And it’s reflected by the lack of older, more
senior people walking around on their campus. Seriously, the
average age is well under 30. Even at 33 my buddy feels old
walking around on that campus!

As long as Google and Yahoo enjoy raking in the cash they will
be able to keep up this pre-bubble environment of theirs, but I
predict that after the first downturn in their business,
the fun, excentric, ‘college like’ atmosphere they enjoy today will
vaporize (and fast)under new market pressures to perform. Employee’s
not used to the ‘normal’ micro-managed world will have a
difficult time trying to re-integrate into the normal world.

So as Prince say’s, party like it’s 1999.. cause’ it’s not likely to
last boys n’ girls.

I wish I could do business with them.