Over the holidays, the writer read the book, The Google Way by Bernard Girard, no starch press, San Francisco, 2009. In the book, Mr. Girard looks at the management system to see how Google is run and if you can then link it to either your company or companies you follow. Could they or should they be more like Google?

Similar to every company, Google tries to recruit the best, however the process to recruit at Google is time consuming. The basic two part process is degrees and academic qualifications are used to evaluate personal qualities such as chosen career path, rigor in reasoning and autonomy. An equally important part of the process is the second part – the candidate must convince his or her future peers that he or she can solve the problems encountered in the everyday work environment. This involves a number of interviews with potential peers. Many in Google are part of the HR team. Once hired, Google wants to retain the workers and besides the great perks, one of their best methods is the 20% rule. The rule is the employee can devote up to 20% of their work time to projects of their own choosing. Peer assessment is involved with the evaluation of the 20% projects. The benefits include doing something you want to that is related to what Google does; increased peer recognition and new products such as Google Suggest, AdSense for Content, and Orkut have come out of this arrangement.

Google was started from a university setting, which means peer review is very important to the dna of google. One example of a reason why peer review works well is  programmers submit projects to other programmers who know the difference between what is good and great. In order to submit their project, they show the code.

Innovation in every company is a goal, but Google is one of the few companies to continually release non perfect software. Most companies send out the expected final copy, Google releases non perfect or beta copies with the understanding and expectations, it will receive feedback on better fixes from the world of first adopters and people hoping to work at Google. One of the reasons Google can release non perfect software is most of its products are non dependent on each other. The enhancements enrich the program rather than having users to relearn the application.The company also sponsors a best code competition – the first winner’s idea resulted in what became Google Local.

There are more questions than answers, till the next time to raising questions