Selected passages...

"When a CEO looks around her staff meeting, a good rule of thumb is that at least 50 percent of the people at the table should be experts in the company's products and services and responsible for product development. This will help ensure that the leadership team maintains focus on product excellence. Operational components like finance, sales, and legal are obviously critical to a company's success, but they should not dominate the discussion."

"Tom Peters: 'There is no such thing as a minor lapse of integrity.'"

"...burnout isn't caused by working too hard, but by resentment at having to give up what really matters to you." (Marissa Mayer)

"This fixation leads to a never-ending spiral into mediocrity. Business leaders spend much of their time watching and copying the competition, and, when they do finally break away and try something new, they are careful risk-takers, developing only incremental, low-impact changes."

"As Nietzsche wrote in 'Thus Spake Zarathustra': 'You must be proud of your enemy; then you enemy's successes are also your successes.' Be proud of your competitors. Just don't follow them."

"As General Patton famously said, 'If everyone is thinking alike, then somebody isn't thinking.'"

"Spend 80 percent of your time on 80 percent of your revenue." (Bill Gates)

"...in the Internet Century, you hire people to _think_."

"Here are a few of our basic guidelines for over-communicating well: 1. Does the communication reinforce core themes that you want everyone to get? 2. Is the communication effective? 3. Is the communication interesting, fun, or inspirational? 4. Is the communication authentic? 5. Is the communication going to the right people? 6. Are you using the right media? 7. Tell the truth, be humble, and bank goodwill for a rainy day."

"Email wisdom: 1. Respond quickly. 2. When writing an email, every word matters, and useless prose doesn't. 3. Clean out your inbox constantly. 4. Handle email LIFO order. 5. Remember, your a router. 6. When you use the bcc feature, ask yourself why. 7. Don't tell. 8. Make it easy to follow up on requests."

"Give the wrong people a big challenge, and you'll induce anxiety. But give it to the right people, and you'll induce joy."

"The timing of a failure is perhaps the trickiest element to get right. A good failure is a fast one: Once you see that the project will not succeed, you want to pull the plug as quickly as possible..."

I expected this book to be more aimed at people fascinated with the Google machine, and less aimed at people running start ups. It felt a bit like a self help guide for entrepreneurs, which isn't what I was after - but still, some excellent pieces on motivation, team and culture that made good reading. Probably one I'll go back to.

How Google Works is an interesting business take on organization management. It’s not the story of how Google works as much as it is how Google is run. If you are like me, thrilled by technical insight rather than business insight, this is not the book for you. But at some point, I began to see that technical insight requires a successful business basis. The book is a celebration of Google’s unorthodoxy of management. Though, Eric cannot seem to decide who he’s talking to, an upcoming entrepreneur, a job applicant or a competitor. My main issue with the book is that it fails to deliver the full story. Business secrecy holds Eric from fully exploring Google’s successes and failures. In fact, Google’s utmost secrecy is a topic never breached even though it’s an important aspect of how its business is run. He does not even get into how he helped scale Google. I think I became much more acutely aware of what is missing and altered to fit Eric’s vision in this book after reading In the Plex.

It was fine. Pretty much exactly what I expected.

good book to know the ins and outs of google and why its this successful as a business.
attracting smart creatives, hiring smart creatives, and keeping smart creatives.

The chapter on hiring the best talent is very good. The rest tends to get redundant. Zero to One covers topics like speed, innovation, and risk-taking with less ink.

Not sure how to rate this tbh... Like wasn't bad, was easy to get through and v insightful (for what I was looking for, not sure about business advice as I'm not planning to own a business lol) but I just don't like the guy. In all honesty, I bought this on my kindle thinking it was a book about the technical aspect of how google works and the data collection. I didn't realise it was written by the CEO, classic me. However! It was insightful to see how the founders/ ceos think and how they come up with google. They give a lot of info and explain how they try and keep "googlers" within the company and form ideas as subsidies of google if they seem keen to leave and do their own thing. ALSO!! EVERYONE WHO EVER GAVE ME SHIT ABOUT 23 AND ME EGG ON YOUR FACE!! 23 and me (owned by google guy's wife i think??) is mentioned in this book and they straight up say YEAH why dont we sell that info so that insurance companies and other organisations have a better understanding of ailments and DNA of potential clients!!! UM BC ITS AN INVASION OF PRIVACY AND THEY CAN THEN MAKE YOU PAY MORE BASED ON FAMILY HISTORY MY GUY THAT'S WHY!!!! Loads of discreet fun nuggets like that were it becomes clear they have no interest in privacy concerns. I mean they say over and over again how great data and data sharing is. I mean yeah only kept up with it bc I had bought it on the kindle and was on hols. Wild to hear how business people talk and fun to get the first hand perspective.

It was a good and amusing read with some geeky humor interspersed along with raw wisdom.

But like many other books (mostly motivational and self help ones) reader should beware of the survivorship bias! This is how Google works, described as clearly and directly as possible, but this is not necessarily how Google turned into a billion(?) dollar company. Many other dead companies have had few or most of such traits but didn't succeed!

So, my advise: apply with care! :)

This is a nice anecdotal, breezy look at what happens at one of the most aspirational organizations in the New World. How they deal with people, problems, innovation, decision making and beyond. It is also, without there being two ways about it – a hagiography of an organization (is that even possible?) which wants to eventually get us to stand up and clap for, bow down to and salute Google for how wonderful they are.

There are two ways to approach a book like this I feel. Once is as a ‘nice to know’ kind of stance – it’s interesting to know what happens in this organization that rules our world, what are the kind of issues they face and admire how cool and wow they are.

The other way would be to question everything and try to draw something out of it to apply in your world. And for that, this may not be the best work. Schmidt and Rosberg, despite their best attempts, are biased. They frequently border on contradicting themselves. Their fall back options are to hire really smart people, give them space, and trust the founders. A heady cocktail which when topped of with being in the right industry and the right time, opens up a lot of doors which the rest of the world doesn’t have. So if you’re looking for answers to how the same thing can be done in x, or change the terms of their anecdotes – you may not necessarily get those answers or it may seem more frustrating.

My 2 cents – read the book as without expecting to go back without great insights into the running of the modern day organization. There is definitely enough in there for something, somewhere to have applications in your world as well. For the rest of the time, let’s all salute Google for all the great things they’ve been able to do – with a nice pinch of salt – and appreciate that it’s a different world.