Inside Google, from Employee #59, and why Google is successful

WSJ's got lots of coverage from different angles, of what Google was like, early in its life from an insider's perspective (Douglas Edwards, employee #59) as an employee, from Edwards' book, "I'm Feeling Lucky"...here, here and here.

"Is Google secretive? No question. Arrogant? Maybe. Tone-deaf to the concerns of the very users it claims to serve? Occasionally. But evil? I don't think so."

This dovetails into Robert Sutton's book, "Weird Ideas that Work", describing slow learners (more on that in a future post.)  It fits neatly, that as an organization fully stocked with slow learners, Google is not only extremely creative, but it also appears to others as arrogant, secretive and deaf.  If you read through the excerpts of Edwards' account of working inside Google, it's obvious that he was not quite one of these slow learners, as he would frequently push back with conventional thinking.

You might realize the pattern: tech companies that grow old, become less relevant, because they slowly lose their creativity and penchant to embrace creative risks.  The longer a company exists, the more the people are consumed by net worth and stock valuations. When asked during yesterday's Q2-2011 earnings call, about how much focus they put on stock price, Larry Page said:

"We have a lot of things to do at Google, and we don't control our stock price. We're focused on overall profitability on long-term, and revenue growth. We focus on that long-term."

Ask the dozens of other leading tech company CEOs the same question, they'll answer it with an MBA's perspective that goes along these lines: We're always keen on improving our value for investors, which is why we're doing..."

That's why Google is winning.

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A small note: There is a discrepancy on the circumstances of his departure, where one writer cites a reorganization and another, Edwards says that he quit so that he could decompress and enjoy time with family.

A smaller note: I just had this weird moment of deja vu about writing this post.  This is how it happens: As I'm about to do something, the patterns in front of me appear to look familiar; as I stare into it, my brain starts to recall, as though in a dream, that a certain sequence of events are about to happen, a split second before they do.  Because the time between recall and action is so small, there is no changing the outcome from the expected action.  It's quite an odd sensation, and one that I've had nearly my entire life.