
Thoughts from my Google tour - ryanwaggoner
http://ryanwaggoner.com/2010/11/thoughts-from-my-google-tour/
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kaib
I used to work at Google and outsiders would always speculate about how the
perks would disappear if the company stopped making insane amounts of money.
There was always an implication that things wouldn't be as rosy then.

Truth is, I would have worked at Google without any of the perks. I now work
at a startup that has zero perks. But it has equally hard problems and equally
brilliant people. And we are empowered and challenged to do our best. I
totally agree the perks are a symptom not a cause.

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gms
I reckon a lot of problems with company culture can be solved by granting
autonomy, paying a reasonable salary, and keeping the hiring bar
uncompromisingly high.

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ryanwaggoner
I think the salary thing is almost orthogonal to good culture; there's lots of
crappy companies out there paying good or great salaries.

The granting autonomy thing is probably the most important one, but that's
really hard to do if you don't already have a good culture. It requires a lot
of trust and respect that crappy companies just don't have.

As for keeping the hiring bar uncompromisingly high, that's a chicken and egg
problem for many companies, because they don't have a good enough reputation
to attract the best talent in the first place.

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gms
Hmm you seem to have taken each of my points in isolation. I was actually
AND'ing them, not OR'ing.

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ryanwaggoner
No, I know what you meant, and I agree that that combination makes for a
killer culture, but I think it's really difficult to pull off unless you
already have a good culture, particularly #2 and #3.

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mh_
I blogged earlier this year about companies that try to copy the beanbags, but
miss the point (cargo cult startups)

<http://blog.thinkst.com/2010/04/cargo-cult-startups.html>

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smysore
The culture at Google is probably also driven by the fact that it's such an
academic environment (in addition to the fact that there's a lot of pro-
engineer sentiment). Facebook has an engineer-driven culture and it's
apparently an awesome environment for programmers but according to Paul
Buchheit (who has worked at both places) it feels a lot more like dorm room
hacker culture and is totally different from Google.

He talks more about company culture here:
[http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/technology/2010/11/facebooks...](http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/technology/2010/11/facebooks-
paul-buchheit-talks-about-facebook-google-and-his-new-gig.html)

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sabj
From friends who have worked at FB (in particular, both FB and Google) they
report that the culture is a little strange and affected: Mark and others put
a big emphasis on the importance of their 'hacker culture,' but try to create
said culture through the exhortations to protect it... [?]

Anyway, I can't vouch for Facebook one way or another, but I can say that
Google certainly has a very strong culture, although it waxes and wanes
depending on where in the company you may be, and can take on different
characteristics by business function. Also, you really can only get a certain
snapshot by visiting, versus actually working there!

