Plan B

Fuelling innovation

Google's Marissa Mayer on what keeps Google ticking (and more importantly, attracts talent). Topics covered include 20% time for engineers, challenging engineers to think at the next (intellectual) level to solve interesting problems, how engineers take pride in working with really smart peers, absence of micromanagement, how the company learns from mistakes, assimilates ideas from various quarters etc.  Going through the video, you'll realize that nothing of what she said is Nuclear Physics and is mostly common sense. But truth be told, very few large technology companies foster such an environment or follow such practices to the T. And that explains the growing chasm between Google and the other Engineering companies. As simple as that.

All said and done, worth a watch. (The first 25 minutes are most relevant).

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=soYKFWqVVzg

Posted at 05:40PM May 05, 2007 by Bharath Ravikumar in General  |