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Everyone is a volunteer. Not just at Google, but in many other situations as well. At Google, pretty much any of the engineers can go and get a job at another

Everyone is a volunteer. Not just at Google, but in many other situations as well. At Google, pretty much any of the engineers can go and get a job at another company whenever they want. So they tend to have access to internal mobility; Google would rather let them fill a different job at the company than have them quit. Thus, managers (either engineering managers or product managers) don't have a lot of coercive capability. The path to success is to not be a manager who forces people to do your bidding, it is to be a leader who persuades your colleagues of your vision. At times the tool of command can be used, but it's best used lightly. My goal is to be service-oriented: my job as a manager is to help my engineers be super-successful, and one of the ways I try to do that is by finding paths for the organization to build great software and leading my team and other teams to cooperating to build it.

jackgavigan 11y ago
What you've said is all great and admirable but it's also a bit aspirational and idealistic, and I'm left wondering: How do decisions get made? For example, let's say there's a list of ideas and suggestions for new functionality and fixes for a product - How does it get prioritised? By consensus? I can't help thinking that there's a risk that the priorities end up being the stuff that the engineers are most interested in working on - i.e. interesting problems and challenges get picked up enthusiastically, while boring, tedious bugs or usability fixes languish unresolved because nobody's particularly interested or enthused in spending time on them, when there's far more interesting/fun stuff to do.
- timdierks 11y ago
  While that's sometimes an element at Google (we tend to be better at building things that engineers love to build and it's harder to do things that engineers don't care for), people are somewhat more enlightened than you fear and can see that the big picture of doing valuable work doesn't mean only doing the fun parts (and one element of managerial leadership is articulating this). Plus, a number of engineers really like fixing bugs, usability fixes, etc. As to how decisions get made: it varies. Sometimes there's some consensus, and sometimes management / executives make decisions without seeking feedback or even going against the input of the team. But it's then incumbent upon them to persuade and lead the org; if they do this poorly, they don't tend to be as successful in the medium or long term. Again, Google isn't remarkable in this fashion, even if it's possibly something of an outlier: in any field of endeavor, you'll be more successful if you can persuade people to want to contribute to your mission rather than forcing them to do it. [Cue up the Antoine de Saint-Exupery quote re: longing for the endless immensity of the sea.]

jackgavigan 11y ago

What you've said is all great and admirable but it's also a bit aspirational and idealistic, and I'm left wondering: How do decisions get made? For example, let's say there's a list of ideas and suggestions for new functionality and fixes for a product - How does it get prioritised? By consensus? I can't help thinking that there's a risk that the priorities end up being the stuff that the engineers are most interested in working on - i.e. interesting problems and challenges get picked up enthusiastically, while boring, tedious bugs or usability fixes languish unresolved because nobody's particularly interested or enthused in spending time on them, when there's far more interesting/fun stuff to do.

timdierks 11y ago
While that's sometimes an element at Google (we tend to be better at building things that engineers love to build and it's harder to do things that engineers don't care for), people are somewhat more enlightened than you fear and can see that the big picture of doing valuable work doesn't mean only doing the fun parts (and one element of managerial leadership is articulating this). Plus, a number of engineers really like fixing bugs, usability fixes, etc. As to how decisions get made: it varies. Sometimes there's some consensus, and sometimes management / executives make decisions without seeking feedback or even going against the input of the team. But it's then incumbent upon them to persuade and lead the org; if they do this poorly, they don't tend to be as successful in the medium or long term. Again, Google isn't remarkable in this fashion, even if it's possibly something of an outlier: in any field of endeavor, you'll be more successful if you can persuade people to want to contribute to your mission rather than forcing them to do it. [Cue up the Antoine de Saint-Exupery quote re: longing for the endless immensity of the sea.]