How Google Makes Tough Decisions - East Idaho News
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How Google Makes Tough Decisions

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HT google offices wg 150407 16x9 992?  SQUARESPACE CACHEVERSION=1428440555415Google(NEW YORK) — Google’s way of making decisions is a lot like high school speech and debate.

Laszlo Bock, senior vice president of people operations at Google and the author of the new book, Work Rules! Insights from Inside Google that Will Transform How You Live and Lead, gave ABC News a peek into how Google tackles a problem.

“The way we approach it is with data,” Bock said. “What we do is we have a problem, we get a set of facts and someone takes one position and someone takes an opposing position.”

For instance: One difficult decision was whether Google should continue offering search results in mainland China.

“We supplemented it with data as much as we could and argued until we reached a decision,” Bock said.

Google shut down its search engine in mainland China in 2009 in protest of the country’s online censorship. Since then, access to Google’s suite of products has been severely limited and blocked in China.

Other times, a decision is made because it is the “right thing to do” and the data come later — such as when Google expanded its maternity leave from 12 weeks to four months, including salary and bonuses.

“We later discovered the data supported it and it made people happier,” Bock said.

While working at Google may be a dream for many people, the company hires only 0.4 percent of two million applicants, according to Bock, making Google around 25 more times selective than Harvard or Stanford. Many of those who apply to Google won’t even get an interview.

However, Bock said, there are plenty of takeaways from Google that could be used in other companies to create a balance of structure and creativity.

Google employees famously dine for free in the company’s cafes and Bock said it’s not because they “want people to be stuck on our campus.”

“We offer perks to build community,” he said. “We do the cafes because we want people to bump into each other.”

It’s those moments, Bock said, where Google’s product ideas are often born — including Google News.

Perks are also offered to “make life easier for people” and aren’t a total free ride. For instance, Bock said Googlers can enjoy on-site oil changes and drop their dry cleaning off at the office.

“You pay for it, but it makes life easier for you. Most of them cost us nothing,” he said. “The question is: Why don’t most companies do these type of things.”

For those people who dream of a job at Google, Bock offers this advice:

“Don’t do the gimmicks,” he said. “Literally, last week we received a 16-by-16 wooden crate and we opened it up and there was a robot inside.”

The robot had a button asking to be pushed. Not only did it not work but “this poor person spent all this time, effort, money and care, and it arrived — and, yeah, we saw it, but it didn’t work or do anything to make us want to interview them.”

The bottom line, Bock said, is: “Just apply.”


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