

Copy the practices that were in place when a successful company (e.g. Google) was truly innovative - skmurphy
http://andrewhargadon.typepad.com/my_weblog/2008/05/googling-the-causal-confusion-syndrome.html

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paul
He's wrong though -- many of those things were around early on. Charlie (the
chef) was hired in 1999, long before Google was the dominant anything. The
notion that treating your employees well isn't "scalable" is nonsense.

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daveambrose
The question, Paul, I have for you (and other Googlers/ex-Googlers reading
along) is this: Is it really the perks or the people that make a successful
company recognizable? Shouldn't a company's actions and performance always
speak louder than its scooters and ping pong tables lining the hallway?

I think this causality (smart people -> smart idea -> smart execution ->
profitability -> more tweaks -> dominance) seems more realistic than what the
author intended to document.

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paul
Thinking of these things as "perks" is the first mistake. Is having a chair
and a good computer a "perk"? For some jobs perhaps, but for people writing
software they are a lot more important (though I'm sure someone will dispute
that chairs are necessary). Likewise, good food and other environmental
factors are very significant.

