Work Rules. Confession of the head of the HR department of Google

The topic of interviews in Google since ancient times has been an inexhaustible source of "horror stories" that could be heard at lunch or near the fire in the smoking room. Even after the company decided to start a puzzle with interviews (I wrote about this two years ago), the process did not become less mysterious for applicants - answers to the questions “Why does the company sometimes eliminate the best ones? Why does it take half a year from the moment of the invitation to the telephone interview to the offer? ” And where there is no accurate data, myths and delusions are born.



In fairness, I must say that the questions about the technical interviews at one time were remarkably revealed by Steve Jegge in his 2008 post . In addition to the high demands on the knowledge of basic Computer Science, there were also mentioned organizational issues - in particular, the difficult whiteboard interview process and the sinister anti-loop that a candidate could get into (a situation where interviewers who fall to an applicant can never objectively evaluate him as a candidate , and will not accept it for work for their own reasons). However, the available part of the information mostly ended with this - after all, the NDA did not allow Google employees to wash dirty linen in public, and no one was going to allow outsiders to go backstage.



Fortunately, now some of the questions of the past are finally resolved, since Google itself decided to shed light on secrets that have tormented curious people for about a dozen years. The first call was the How Google Works book, published last fall, authored by Eric Schmidt, which drew the company's development trajectory over time, focusing on the company's core values ​​— it closely linked Google’s products with the way people worked and thought. cadres decide everything ”).



Appeared not so long ago, the book Work Rules! (in Russian translation - “Work taxis! Why most people in the world want to work at Google” - you can read the pages available on Google Books, worthy translations) from the head of the Google HR division, Laszlo Bock, is devoted to a detailed examination of the difficult question of finding those employees and their further life within the company.

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The book itself reminded me of such a porcupine; the similarity is that instead of needles, numbers and facts “stick out” from everywhere in the narrative. The author did not stint on the specifics, and this is a serious merit of the book - the company conducting several million interviews a year with the best possible candidates already has a lot of data collected, as well as enough opportunities for their analytics. Half of their conclusions, of course, is obvious (however, it is no less fascinating to read about them from this), but some are able to surprise, and a small part should be taken into account.



The introduction to the book is the author's story about his own professional path that led him to Google. The starting point, by the way, is described by him as follows:

Even the most widespread business plans go to ashes if people do not believe in them. Managers always talk like "people are first and foremost," and then treat them like a consumable item.

After a small selection of standard tales about the history of the company and an inspirational story about how important its mission is (of course, appropriate given for those who first come across a book about Google), the story goes on to things more interesting. For example, the process of buying baseball players and its counterpart - recently accepted in Silicon Valley “hiring and absorption”, which aims not just to buy the intellectual property of a small company, but also to “get people who already have the ability to create great products otherwise they would never work for you. ” Laszlo Boc reasonably criticizes this approach, which are not just unnecessarily expensive, but may not work - because no one likes to watch the new company kill the fruits of their labors, the hired-invited engineers wait for the money and leave it. In addition, as it turns out, Google still does not have proof that experts hired in this way are better and more productive than those who were hired in the usual way. Therefore, the author argues that an effective personnel strategy (in terms of interviewing and recruiting) is much more important, and instead of spending on training initially medium-sized employees (which, as it turned out, results below average), it is worthwhile to increase the efficiency of recruiting and immediately hire the best - famous jeff dean . The common thread of this truly uncompromising thought will pass through the rest of the book.



How in the conditions of growth of the company to maintain the quality bar set by its founders? As a response, at first you will be "scared" by the figure of 25 interviews (exactly as many interviews at Google were conducted with each candidate in the early 00s), and then they will tell you that the optimum number after years was chosen 4 - since each of the subsequent interviews increased the probability hiring the right candidate for only 1%. One of the most memorable examples that can be useful in practice is the story about the study, how strongly the form of the interview is related to the accuracy of the assessment, whether the employee of the company fits, and the following results are obtained: a modest result of 14% is given to a normal conversation, 29% to a test task , and tests for cognitive abilities (behavioral and situational) - 26% (in more detail Laszlo Bok told about it in his author’s column , the materials of which became part of the book).



Do not wait for ready-made recipes - Google itself does not know the exact answer, so get ready to experiment a lot (prototyping is a favorite activity in the company). However, there are many useful tips in the book, including cautions regarding the inefficiency of referrals and standard sites for job search ads. Takzhetam provides recommendations, partly explaining the logic of the behavior of the interviewers at the interviews. There are enough interesting details about both sides. And it is recommended that recruiters seek candidates by themselves - via LinkedIn, Google+, alumni databases and professional associations.



Another important topic of the book is the further development of frames within Google.



About how the company studies the "best" and helps the "worst", tells the theory of "two tails"

Our approach makes us somewhat vulnerable: we love to hire people who don’t have a very good idea of ​​how to take on the job they offer. We believe that almost all of them will sort things out as a result, and in the process they will probably invent something new, unlike employees who work according to the principle of “go there, do something.”

Of course, with such an approach, no "preventive measures" will certainly help to predict the final performance of the performers. As a result, each team has “tails” - people who are located at both ends of the distribution curve of working efficiency.



Google regularly detects 5% of those who are lagging behind, which form the “lower” tail of this curve - but this is not done to dismiss them, as most companies would have done. Usually, coaching and training help the employee to develop the necessary skills for the job, otherwise he is looking for another place within Google, where his personal productivity has a chance to grow. In the end, the high rate of work in the company is not for everyone, and employees who continue to be among the latter leave Google and go in search of happiness in other companies. This system of the “bottom 5%” has nothing to do with the forced “group ranking,” since it pursues other goals.



And what about the "stars", that is, the "upper tail"?



As repeatedly stated by the author, high performance is largely dependent on the context. The best employees in the company are studied under the microscope, especially the relationship between performance and specific local conditions. To this end, since 2008, an internal research group on Human Resources and Innovations ( PiLab ) has been working there, studying how people perceive and perform their work. As an example, the book considers the project “Oxygen”, conceived to prove the thesis “managers do not play any role”, and the result was the conclusion that good managers play a decisive role (the book gives an evolution of the methods for analyzing the assessment of managers, as well as analysis of various aspects of the work of the manager, which help make the work of teams more productive). A separate conversation is devoted to the place of "patients" in whose hands there is a "mental hospital" - the book details how the managers at Google lost formal power over their subordinates over time, while continuing to bring practical benefits.



Unfortunately, other “tasty” studies (for example, the Gifted Youngsters project, which was designed to find out how the actions of those who show consistently high results for a long time are different from those of others) are mentioned casually and are not considered in the book.



The chapter “Your best people are better than you think and cost more than you pay them” reveals the problems of the generally accepted remuneration system, due to which the best and most talented are forced to leave companies (the hint - their personal contribution to the common cause increases much faster than their salary). Based on the fact that the working performance is distributed by the exponent , Google found that 26% of the results give out 5% of the employees of the "upper" edge of the scale. Accordingly, the company distributes the rewards - according to the author, Google aims to “bestow” the best, “saving” on all the others, including average workers, and if the best receive 50% more ordinary employees (and even times ), then the “lagging behind”, according to Laszlo, “will witness and understand that they may also be among them (or go to another company)”.



After that, the story comes about unpleasant features of work in the company. Google, like any system, is at times capable of exerting not the best pressure on people, as a result of which even the most dedicated employees who have been with her from the very beginning and continue to outpace her development by several steps can leave the company. Why was to talk about such errors? In order to show that Google didn’t immediately become what we see it today, therefore, traditional companies, if they wish, have a chance to change in its direction.



At the end, the reader is asked to fix the mantra “hire only those who are better than you” and “do not pay in fairness”, as well as if you want to read the optional chapter “How to create the world's first People Operations team”, after which an impressive list of references in in the form of English-language books and articles with the originals of the examined studies. Considering the scope of topics, in one sitting, it will hardly be possible to read and digest everything - you will need thoughtful reading and analysis of what may come in handy in life.



And do not be deceived by the bright cover on which people in the subway repeatedly looked, and the title “Work taxis!” - they are here for the same reason as the original company logo: high-octane content is hidden under the colorful wrapper, and the book is another The most real Google product. The question of its application in practice, especially considering the current financial situation, remains open.