Monday, May 28, 2007

Google Its Own Undoing?

PBS.ORG -- Cringley says that Google's policy of requiring all employees to spend 20% if their time on personal projects, and then their inability to promote all of said projects to official Goggle offerings, combined with a culture that encourages Googlers to live at work means that Googlers will get together, discuss the projects Google passed on and when they're vested they'll set out on their own. (He says they'll pick some failures and leave some good projects behind.) More...

I have a partial solution. First, do a better job of picking which projects to promote. Let the entire staff vote and then give those that voted for the winning promotees a financial stake in those projects' futures. That will use the wisdom of crowds to really pick the best candidates. You get the best projects pushed forward, you get people having a greater interest in their success, and the longer you stay at Google, the quicker you make more and more money.

Won't stop all defections, but deflect some.

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