Google: "The best company to work for"

In its latest Fortune 100 Best company to Work for in America list, Google is #1 – on its debut. The company is marked as a medium-sized business with 6,500 employees and has had 67% year-on-year employee growth.

So why the award?: "Free meals, swimming spa, and free doctors onsite. Engineers can spend 20% of time on independent projects. No wonder Google gets 1,300 résumés a day."

Other quickly recognisable names on the list include Cisco systems, Ernst & Young, Nike, Starbucks, AstraZeneca and long-term Google competitor Yahoo at #44.

What's really interesting here relates to something I wrote in the editor's column of the soon to published Knowledge Management Review 9.6, which explores knowledge and innovation. In that issue I noted that the companies who do well with their knowledge programs (as recognized in the MAKE awards scheme in the issue) are also those we see regularly as innovators. Google was one of them and now the company's culture has also been formally recognised as another perfectly firing cylinder in a very successful engine.

A question on the Fortune site asks: "Is Google's culture the cause of its success or merely a result? Put another way: Is Google a great place to work because its stock is at $483, or is its stock at $483 because it's a great place to work?"

What do you think?

Alex

Comments

[Judy Gombita]

Alex, The Globe and Mail (a Canadian national newspaper) has been publishing a series of articles by Don Tapscott and Anthony D. Williams to describe/promote their new book, Wikinomics: How Mass Collaboration Changes everything. I remember taking note of these paragraphs from Part 7: 'Us' power (which I think was published in last Saturday’s paper):

“Meanwhile at Google, employees are required to dedicate 20 per cent of their time to personal projects -- projects that interest employees but needn't slot neatly into Google's predefined road maps. In keeping with its belief in collaboration and encouraging self-organization, the company tracks the pet projects that employees conjure up.

"Virtually all of the product ideas in Google come from the 20 per cent of the time employees work on their own projects," Google CEO Eric Schmidt says....”

I would suggest that this would have HUGE appeal to Google’s employees: that a personal project might result in Google developing it into a product idea!

For now interested individuals can read the entire article (and the six before) online, but don’t delay too long as the G&M has a reputation for limiting time (quite short) the articles can be accessed for free:

The Globe and Mail article

On another note, one of the books I read over the recent hols was Douglas Coupland’s delightful jPod. (You may recall that this Vancouverite coined the phrase “Generation X” in an earlier novel.) Besides having the wonderful conceit of Coupland inserting himself into the story line (not at all a complimentary portrayal, BTW), I think it is also very good at capturing the crazy environment, energy and creativity of young adults who work in the tech sector (in this case, the company and jPod team creates video games). Recommended reading on what appeals (or not) to 20- and early 30-somethings in the workplace. Plus it's quite an amusing read.

[Alex Manchester]

Hi Judy,

I'd agree the 20% free project time is one of the most enticing things on the face of working for Google. I do find myself wondering if it's as black and white as it seems, though: after all, how much time does 20% equate to? Is that 20% of their basic working hours (as in compulsory on the employment contract) or is it 20% of the total time they spend in the office? If it was the former, is this time more than made up with the extra hours that a highly-motivated, supremely hard working Google engineer (who's also well people are queuing up outside for his/her job) puts in?

However, if Schmidt is quoted as saying that's where most of the innovations come from, it's very impressive and it makes you wonder why they don't devote even more time to "free-time" - or why other companies haven't started doing it en-masse given the [increased] importance now placed on innovation.

I've not read jPod but will investigate. The Google Story book (Amazon link) has given me an appetite for Silicon Valley-esque reads.

[Vincent Sorel]

I agree with Alex,

I was actually reading an article during the Christmas holiday that Google employees are putting in an impressive number of extra hours in their jobs, so 20% of their time is probably less than those extra hours.

That said, a lot of Google employees are apparently more than happy to work that much as they love their jobs and are devoted to the Google brand.

Google also provides a free shuttle bus to their campus for their employees living in San Francisco (a good 40 minutes drive away), and this shuttle bus is fitted with a wi-fi connection so that the employees can start working during the commute!

[Judy Gombita]

Alex, one of the differences between the Fortune article you cited and the G&M one I did was that Fortune only mentions "engineers." The G&M article implies the "20 per cent rule" applies to all employees, regardless of whether they are directly involved in product development or an in-house service (e.g., accounting, HR, IC or PR).

I would hazard a guess that this is because the most intuitive and useful ideas come from the end users, not so much the architects and designers (or engineers). Google's leadership has *always* recognized that fact: make it easy and useful.

After I read the article and your post, I started thinking about what I would propose as a personal-interest project if I was told I must right now. I actually came up with a (I think) pretty good idea, combining my PR role for an association of professional accountants with my personal interest in literature, theatre and films. I'll try to find time to develop it a bit more and provide a brief sketch later.

Regarding the 20 per cent time issue, I'd suggest that if you only have 80 per cent of the time available to do the main job for which you were hired (e.g., a Google payroll clerk), one might become resentful if forced to work on the pet project during personal hours. Or maybe not. I understand the screening/hiring process at Google is fairly intensive; I suspect the majority of hires are quite prepared to translate their passion for Google into non-traditional/less structured work hours and for longer than the average company employee, possibly even during the commute to work, as Vincent noted.

In Coupland's novel (note that it is fiction) the various jPod employees often work through most of the night. They prefer it that way. (Speaking of which, note that jPod is set in Vancouver, not Silicone Valley, and that the unique character of this west coast city and its various inhabitants is quite pronounced.) I’ll add the Google Story book to my “check it out” list.

[Judy Gombita]

Because of the earlier discussion on this blog, I noted (with interest) the lead article in the Jan. 17th issue of Media in Canada:

Is Google about to revolutionize billboards?

The patent application that's sparking excitement about a potential revolution in ad delivery was filed by Mountain View, CA-HQ'd Google on Dec. 21, 2006. Some tech writers in the US picked up on the story last week, but their coverage so far contains much speculation and little in the way of official comments.

Google's Toronto office declined to comment, but California-based Google spokesperson Ricardo Reyes tells MiC: "We file patent applications on a variety of ideas that our employees come up with. Some of them later mature into real products or services, some don't. Prospective product announcements should not necessarily be inferred from our patent applications."

Click the link below to read the full story:

http://www.mediaincanada.com/articles/mic/20070117/google.html