“Work Rules”

I have referred to the exceedingly generous perks offered by Google in earlier postings. Google has repeatedly been named the best company to work for.  LinkedIn has described Google as the most sought after place to work in the world. Since the perks are most visible and so outstanding, the first blush conclusion is that Google’s desirability and strong culture is because of the perks. And the second conclusion is that only a company with Google’s resources could be that generous.

I recently read “Work Rules,” a book by Laszlo Bock, head of “People Operations” at Google. (Even the name of the department – “People Operations” – is telling, and lovely…. where did companies ever get the term “Human Resources,” and why doesn’t the community of “people” object to such a dehumanizing label?)

The book describes a lot about the culture of what makes Google, Google - - and claims that it goes way beyond the perks. (I concur). It also points out that a lot of the “perks” are really a small cost to the company, and any company can offer these if they open their minds and default to saying “yes.”

Some key features of Google culture, contributing to a happy and productive employee community:

• Google is a “high freedom” company, where employees have a lot of latitude. For example, the informal concept of “20% time” - - giving Googlers 20% of their week to focus on projects that interest them.
• Managers cannot make unilateral decisions about whom to hire or fire, how their performance is rated, whom to promote, the final design of a product and when to launch it.  (So what do managers do? “Managers serve the team,” according to executive chairman Eric Schmidt.)
• There is a belief that people are fundamentally good, and Google treats them like owners instead of machines…”Machines do their jobs; owners do whatever is needed to make their companies and teams successful.” If you believe people are good, you must be unafraid to share information with them. Google shares everything, and trusts Googlers to keep the information confidential.
• Many of the “people practices” at Google started when Google was neither big nor rich. Weekly TGIF meetings, hiring decisions made by groups rather than a single manager, the policy of welcoming dogs to come to work with you, “free meals” in the early days which comprised cereal and milk and lots of M&Ms.
• The Founders letter when Google went public is telling:  “We believe it is easy to be penny wise and pound foolish with respect to benefits that can save employees considerable time and improve their health and productivity.”

The microkitchens and the cafes promote efficiency and community….and are indeed expensive, and harder to replicate by companies with fewer means… As are the free shuttle buses that drive Googlers all around Northern California, and subsidized child care. But most of Google’s people programs are (almost) free…and can be duplicated by anyone. The goal of the people programs is to achieve efficiency, community, innovation. On site car washes, dry cleaning, and mobile haircuts are “free” for Google; Googlers themselves pay for these services. Entrepreneurs are happy to have permission to come on site, and Google can negotiate some volume discounts for employees.  Programs like “Take your parents to work day” (really!), events like TGIF, juggling clubs, networks for “Gayglers,” “Greyglers,” “Women at Google,” “Black Googler Network,” and nap pods… contribute to culture, but cost the company almost nothing. Googlers have organized talks by external speakers as part of their personal 20% projects - - (with speakers that include Presidents Obama and Clinton, Game of Thrones author RR Martin, Toni Morrison, David Beckman) 

So as the book suggests….Many companies could do more to replicate Google’s culture. It is part of a “belief system” more than a function of “generous perks.”

The no-dress-code, dress code

Google takes pride in the fact that there is no formal dress code. There are weekly TGIF events, where Google’s founders present a town hall meeting for Googlers only. (It is very impressive that they are “there” every week to share information to everyone on staff…) Larry Page and Sergey Brin appear in shorts and T-shirts. This clearly sets a tone. Mark Zuckerberg of Facebook is famous for going around in a hoodie. I remember earlier “business advice” was to dress for the next role you would like to assume. On any given day, if senior leadership is looking around for “whom should we promote today,” you should “look” like the executive that you aspire to be. In Silicon Valley, that probably means dramatically dressing down. If you want to become Mark Zuckerberg, and look like Mark Zuckerberg, that would mean dressing like this:

Google has recently hired a new CFO, Ruth Porat.  She comes to Google from Morgan Stanley, where she was CFO.  She appeared at a recent TGIF, dressed in jeans and a silk-looking shirt. I am betting that this is the first time she appeared in a formal company event, in blue jeans. In her previous role, she probably slept in a business suit…But now, she is dressing according to the “no dress code” dress code of Silicon Valley.

I hardly wore business suits at IBM Research. For the most part, I wore khakis and a shirt; sometimes with a sweater or jacket. Not all that fancy. I noticed here at Google that people wore (for the most parts) shorts, or jeans. Khakis seem a little too dressy.

I spent a couple of weeks working out of the Google NYC office. There, I noticed, there is a little more diversity of dress than Silicon Valley. Women in particular were likely to be wearing sleeveless sun dresses and flip flops or flat sandals. NYC chic appears to have trumped the techie environment dress-down.

California….and the livin’ is… PRICEY

Silicon Valley has become a popular place for tech businesses…after all, it now has its own television show.

It was a manageable section of the country just 15 years ago. The population of Mountain View is now about 80,000, with about 25% of the population working at Google.

But the infrastructure hasn’t kept up.

In 2000, Google had a few dozen employees. Fast forward to 2015, with >50,000 employees worldwide, and most of those in northern California. Real estate costs are absurdly expensive. One bedroom apartments near the Googleplex average $2000-$3000/month. I have been shielded from this by getting Google corporate housing for the last 3 months. But the 3 months will come to a close in another few weeks, and so I am in full-gear-apartment search.

There are lots of apartment complexes that have sprouted up. I refer to them as dormitories for grown-ups. The apartments don’t have much character, style, or soul; they are clean, new, and pricey. Some photos of the complexes in my community in Santa Clara are included.

https://photos.google.com/share/AF1QipNAPOs99u8F-q2oQKZmJ2nI5ZKUa75Ulqs8QDarEXNafoe1E3mLVihBpZI7jkicQQ?key=TlhFSEtpYldBWFM5ZV9zby1RaVdyaHR4SHN1RTBn

The closer you are to the hub of the action (or, if you choose to be in San Francisco), the more expensive the options are.I am now very close to the hub of the action. In my 7 mile drive to the Google office, I pass Oracle, Yahoo, Juniper Networks, Lockheed Martin…All contributing to the density of population.And, therefore, the density of traffic. You can get a more affordable living space if you are willing to drive 25 or 30 miles to work. No big deal in Westchester County, but here, you will be in traffic for hours. I have rather modest criteria for the apartment that I choose…but proximity to the office is high on the desirable list.

My recommendation to all the big companies here, and to the municipalities that house them: When you expand your complex and increase your population, you should be obligated to build with it a lot of housing, so that you increase supply and reduce the outrageous cost of housing. Sort of like the mandate to provide parking facilities if you build a housing project that will bring thousands of cars to the area. And if the communities and companies are going to allow tens of thousands of employees to come in for work, then housing needs to become more NYC-like - - multi-story, multi unit. It is lovely to have town ordinances that mandate pastoral garden apartments. But it can’t absorb the masses; and the intense demand drives prices haywire. Housing accommodations on the work site will also reduce some of the traffic burden, as these same employees won’t then crowd the highways.  I shoulda been a city planner…J

Designing the workspace

At IBM Research, we had private offices. The norm for new tech companies is the open space - -lots of desks and chairs, abutting.

I envision companies just launching, with a cadre of 10 people all feverishly inventing, developing, and discussing what needs to be done out of the proverbial garage.  The interaction is frequent, and collocation is key.

Fast forward to startups that are no longer startups, and now have thousands of employees.

Hundreds of people sharing the same open space are no longer all collaborating with one another, non-stop. It gets harder and harder to collocate all of the people that are working on a particular project; some of the team might be in a remote office location. So now people are abutting desks and chairs with others that may or may not be working on the same projects. Overhearing their conversations and issues becomes a distraction to your own work.

Even if people are all working on the same project, we aren’t always talking and strategizing; sometimes we need the quiet time to actually deliver. That is harder in a noisy space. It is also harder when you are just “out there” and so any random person that sees you might come over and start a conversation.

The solution? Headphones. You will see lots of people working with headphones on. They are either listening to music while they work, or they are creating a “signal” – like a closed door - -“I am working now, knock first if you want to interrupt.”

When you are going to have a meeting with a few people, or even a videoconference call, you can’t do it at your desk; you will disturb the others around you that are not working on the same project, or not working on the same phase of that project at this particular time. So you need to find a conference room. The open space model assumes that you do most of your work in a public space, and separate off into a quiet conference room space when you need to have lengthy conversations with other people.

I also think about the growing population with attention deficit disorder (ADD). Some estimates claim that this is 11% of the population, and that most of these are male (the dominant gender in tech companies.) Placing people to work in these bustling shared spaces is probably not ideal to get highest productivity. Unless we have inadvertently found a “cure” for ADD, through an immersion process..

I don’t suffer from ADD; our house was always rollicking and chaotic and so I can function just fine in that sort of setting. But I do miss my own office –with all of the personal touches of life around me; pictures of my family on the wall, and all the other nick nacks – that make your office feel more like the second home that it really is.