Work Rules!: Insights from Inside Google That Will Transform How You Live and Lead

A great and entertaining book. You get a few things here: very interesting insight into the Google culture, atmosphere and way of working (almost a follow up to "How Google Works"), but you also get a deep data driven and analytical viewpoint into how they have adapted the Human Resource function to their highly data driven culture. They still care about the individual (perhaps even more so), and use data as the diagnostic and tool to provide a better work environment, more active feedback and quantify and develop excellence. It is also clear that the culture starts from the top down, but I am sure at any company you could pick up some best practices and quickly apply them. A very good, solid business read.

What I love about this book is that it provides very clear and practical advice about what one can and should do for a range of HR processes and issues. It also provides a lot of food for thought and ideas to work towards since not every business can do the things that Google is doing in its people operations. Even if your company isn't anywhere near Google's size and reputation, there are a tremendous amount of useful insights, even for small and medium sized businesses. Mr. Bock has done an excellent public service by writing this book.

This book does have a lot of good, useful, and interesting information. Compared to another book I've read that also came out of Google (How Google Tests Software) I think this one is much better in terms of the content being actionable and thoughtful and, to my knowledge, reflecting how things actually work at Google. One thing that was frustrating about the software testing book is that it was very unreflective -- it simply told you what Google did, without discussing the pros and cons of various approaches. Work Rules! is much more thoughtful in terms of providing evidence that the techniques it discusses work. It even discusses some failed projects by HR -- er, I mean People Ops -- at Google, and why they failed. So, why not five stars? A few reasons. One is that there is a lot of space devoted to self-promotion of Google, which while not unexpected in a book written by Google's head of People Ops, doesn't add much to the reader's experience. Another is that a good chunk of the content is likely to already be very familiar to readers -- Bock spends a lot of time explaining what a normal distribution is, for example, or describing the Employee Resource Groups (i.e., various affiliation groups like the veteran's group or the parents' group) that are extremely common at companies of Google's size. The third problem is that "it's the economy, stupid" -- some of the content around hiring and compensation is likely specific to Google's particular situation, its success, the labor market and so forth when at the time covered by the book, and is probably not universally valid. The final problem is that while a lot of the "tactical" level advice is highly evidence-based, several of the high-level ideas, such as "it is better to hire the very best people than to hire merely okay people and train them" or "it makes sense to pay your best engineers an order of magnitude more than other engineers at the same level" or even "whiteboard coding interviews are a good way of assessing candidates" have very, very little evidence provided to support them. In many cases the evidence for these claims is based on a combination of cherry-picked anecdotes, one or two studies done decades ago and not on engineers, and a reasonable-sounding argument that makes sense until you realize that you could make an equally reasonable-sounding argument in the opposite direction. I would love to see a book that really picks apart and tests some of these assumptions. That said, it's a fun read with a decent amount of useful advice, which makes it a very solid four stars.

This book, even after 12 years, is an inspiration to those who want to turn their HR departments into strategic partners in their businesses, by designing and provide a meaningful employee experience that will transform how companies have been operating. Glad to see Laszlo Bock applying the same transparency practiced at Google throughout this book, with the intent to multiply the number of companies where people don't feel miserable at their jobs.

Work Rules delves into Google's People Operations practices. Here are my key takeaways: - Operate on the belief that people are fundamentally good - Use groups of peers or independent teams for: hiring, promotions, salary increases, awards, and firing (often excluding the direct manager) - Managers exist to: (a) make tie-breaking decisions (b) coach/train to develop employees (c) care about people's well-being (d) set vision/strategy (e) provide technical advice (f) empower by clearing roadblocks - Conduct 2x-per-year performance reviews on a 5-point scale and then calibrate (which are separate from continuous feedback); get 360 feedback on ‘do more of’ and ‘do differently’ 1x per year - Make all goals (objectives and key results) public - Design physical spaces to encourage interaction across departments - Help employees meet the people they are helping - Ensure transparency (in all matters unless unlawful) - Only hire people who are better than you, who will be successful in the context of your organization, and who will make everyone around them more successful - Referrals from existing employees are the best source of candidates - Couple assessments of cognitive/problem-solving/learning ability, conscientiousness, and emergent leadership/fit with structured interviews that are job related: (a) Tell me about a time..? (b) What would you do if…? Note: 4 interviews are sufficient - Eliminate status symbols - Pay bonuses based on the median salary of all people in a job - Have people who are the best at something train everyone else (share principles, role-play, discuss, review video of role-play) - Make pay commensurate with contribution (following a power law rather than a normal distribution) - Provide experiential rewards (as a complement to monetary awards) - Celebrate accomplishment with public recognition - Reward smart failure and make sure to conduct “what did we learn?” post-mortem sessions - Provide nudges to influence, not dictate, choice - Uphold the obligation to dissent (a McKinsey core value) - Treasure the weird - Put more wood behind fewer arrows - Building a great culture requires constant experimentation and renewal Various programs and processes: - TGIF: weekly all company meeting to share updates plus 30 minutes of Q&A - Dogfooding: Have employees test new products and provide feedback before piloting with customer - Bureaucracy Busters: annual program to identify and fix biggest frustrations - Upward Feedback Survey: 2x per year survey about manager quality - 20 Percent time: time for people to engage in side-projects (often 120% time) - Googlegeist: Annual survey focused heavily on innovation, execution, and retention - Tech Advisor: network of experienced leaders offering confidential, one-on-one office hours - Random Lunches: set people up with others they don’t yet know - Tech Talks: Employees sharing work (and non-work) expertise - Talks at Google: Outsider (ex: authors, business leaders, entertainers, etc.) sharing their wisdom

Great insights, love it much better than HBR books. Gained actual practical knowledge because of this book. Giving only 4 Stars because its bit jammed with too much upselling of Google's achievements taking so much space in the book

Excellent book on people management practices in 21st century. Good overview of people dynamics inside Google. Great experience buying on Amazon. Good value for money.

本の状態は説明通りでした。配達日も予定通りに届きました。

I'm an upcoming Google SWE and my manager recommended me reading this book to get an idea of how Google works and more importantly, WHY it works like that (hint: it's not just that they have money to do that).

It is an interesting book with amazing stories of employee empowerment, importance of rewards and recognition, employee satisfaction etc. It gives an insight to what goes on inside one of the most successful companies out there. I would strongly recommend this book to everyone specially to those who are managing people and projects and are making decisions within an organization. One of the most interesting thing about this book is that Laszlo has done a good job in conveying management tips by using real examples from Google. I was smiling most of the time while reading the book because I was able to relate to many things that goes in companies. Read it, I bet you will love it :-).