The Google Way of Attacking Problems
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One Friday afternoon in 2002, long before his company became a household verb, Larry Page walked into the office kitchen and posted some printouts of results from Google’s AdWords engine. On top, in big bold letters, he wrote, “THESE ADS SUCK.”
In most companies, this would be seen as cruel — an arrogant executive publicly humiliating his hapless employees for shoddy work — but not at Google. In fact, his unusual act was a show of confidence, defining a tough problem that he knew his talented engineers would want to solve.
In their new book, How Google Works, Eric Schmidt and Jonathan Rosenberg describe what happened next. By early Monday morning, a group of engineers sent out an email with a solution that not only resolved the AdWords problem, but helped transform Google into a major money machine. The episode exemplifies how Google has built a culture that attacks problems — not people. I see four assumptions that drive that kind of culture:
1. People want to do a good job.
2. Given enough eyeballs, every bug is shallow.
3. People perform best at tasks that interest them.
4. Great leaders provide a sense of mission and purpose.
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