Its Great to know your feelings about Google. It is encouraging me to be a part of google. You have Portrait your experience in such a away that it made me read till end though my office got over an hour back.

take care and All the best

how is he not practicing it? Don’t make such comments and don’t even have the guts to put a URL into the post so that people can find you :-)

Cheers, Hans

Too bad you have bought into Gore’s “climate in crisis” BS though. If he believed it he would practice it.

Your post seems as if its a prediction based on what corporations have traditionally done.

All be it there are some things that Google may not be able to avoid since they are publicly traded.

However, I wonder if Google’s culture and openness towards creativity can overcome the loss of productivity and loss of quality products big businesses experience when they go down the road you’ve mentioned.

Would a company that is healthily growing always keep those perks up, because they are part of the running costs of a company? I think the only way for staying in business is to constantly grow and therefor be ahead of the inflation.

Your argument would implement that the people that run google become more and more greedy for the sake of the stock holders. Which brings me to a whole new point, a company that just stays in the hands of a few investors (not at the stock market) can make decisions that might not be good for a company owned by stockholders, but that are good on the long run. Isn’t this the reason why RedBull was able to stay this successful?

Anyways, I just started a very small company (http://www.ukunto.com) and I’ve thought about what I’m going to do when the point comes to go public or not. I think I will try to hold on to it (if it ever comes to that point) so that the company can be successful and have lots of healthy ROI for my kids and kids kids.

Cheers, Hans

1.) Google is, first and foremost, a business. You will see more and more movement toward measuring ROI and cutting budgets in 2008 and beyond. This is what successful corporations do…

2.) Corporate politics are alive at Google. Given the magnitude of headcount growth - doubling size in one year - there will be growing pains that manifest themselves in turnover, restructuring our org charts, lay-offs (disguised as firing to protect the stock price), and an increase in the number of “corporate climbers.”

It’s important to stay aware of these things so you will be better prepared for when they do happen - and you will become more resilient to the change.

Watch for the signs:
* Slowly cutting back of benefits (incentives, perks, food) little by little
* More people suddently leaving to “pursue other opportunities”
* Sudden re-structuring of teams (shuffling of managers)
* More explanation required from us to describe our projects/tasks impact on the bottom line (paperwork)
* Events downsized (Google events/parties canceled or minimized)
* Less schwag (ie. no more T-shirts, etc)
* More automation (reducing need for headcount)
* Reduction in the hiring of contractors or temps (and letting current contracts expire without renewal)

Please stay aware…

thanks for sharing.
best regards,
Jia Adil

How do you serve “chemical-free” food to engineers without inspiring laughter?

10 Insights From 11 Months Of Working At Google | Occam’s Razor by Avinash Kaushik
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Yes, we’ve heard news reports of how fab this company is. But no real descriptions or photos right? You should go read what Avinash Kaushik, a Google analytics evangelist, has to say about Google.

But duh. Isn’t he an evangelist? Shouldn’t he gush about the place?

But hold your criticism until you read his blog post.

I believe companies of the future should emulate after ones worth emulating.

And until Google or Semco came along, we didn’t have a model to follow.
[...]