Bullet book review: How Google Works

Just finished listening to this book on Audible (pro tip: Listen at 150% speed). Below are some bullets that really stood out to me.

  • Business plan – Google initially created a business plan that didn’t actually tie the engineers to anything. In hindsight this worked quite well in allowing them the freedom to be creative.
  • Obligated to dissent – By default every team member should be required to share their dissent on a subject.
  • Idea: Try art gallery Google, their open gallery project. Sounds pretty amazing!
  • If you want something done, give it to a busy person.
  • Knights and knaves – (Assholes and divas), keep your divas around, as long as their output is more beneficial then the cost to the company ,but get rid of assholes.
  • Say yes, that should be your default to a new idea.
  • Default to open, except when legally required to keep something closed
  • Don’t follow your competition. Don’t get into a siege mentally. However, don’t completely ignore your competition or you may get complacent.
  • Be proud of your enemy. Just don’t follow them
  • Focus on your product and platform
  • Slides kill discussion. Get input from everyone room. Then, iterate very very fast.
  • Be a learning animal, hire learning animals.
  • Hire brilliant generalists, if they’re learning animals they’ll catch on quick and they won’t be biased by preconceived notions of how something SHOULD work
  • When looking to hire, consider awards and patents, that shows a lot of effort and interest
  • Beware the opinion of the HiPPO, might stifle discussion
  • Big rewards should be given to people who are closest to the biggest products, the people building the thing. What counts is impact.
  • Learn big numbers, learn how data works, even if  you’re not a numbers guy, at least understand what to ask for so someone can help you
  • Know everything about the field you want to get into by reading, think like a CEO and read
  • Everyone’s voice should be heard in a meeting – throw out stupid softballs (I think we should all pour hydrochloric acid on ourselves, thoughts?)
  • Big decision and no agreement? Meet daily to rehash and set deadline
  • Every meeting needs hands on decision maker
  • No more than 8-10 people in a meeting
  • Attendance at meetings is not a badge of importance. Fewer people are almost always better
  • Start and end on time or early
  • Don’t multitask in meetings. If you’re doing something else you shouldn’t be there. Too many meetings? Rethink priorities.
  • Spend 80% of your time on 80% of your revenue
  • Find a coach
  • Be a router. Move info fast
  • Have company wide OKRs. Everyone’s should be shared.
  • Default to open
  • Repetition doesn’t spoil the prayer
  • Over communicate well: 20x. You’ll be ignored the first few times.
  • Email: clean out the parts people will skip when writing an email
  • Tip for a quick email response: got it, proceed
  • Processes shouldn’t be able to catchup with innovation.
  • When praise is deserved, don’t hold back
  • Ship and iterate
  • Release products, see if they gain momentum, and only then do a marketing push