How Google Works

by Eric Schmidt

the compensation curve should start low. You can attract the best smart creatives with factors beyond money: the great things they can do, the people they’ll work with, the responsibility and opportunities they’ll be given, the inspiring company culture and values, and yes, maybe even free food and happy dogs sitting desk-side.

Pay outrageously good people outrageously well, regardless of their title or tenure. What counts is their impact.

When you hire great people, some of them may come to realize that there is a world beyond yours. This isn’t a bad thing, in fact it’s an inevitable by-product of a healthy, innovative team. Still, fight like hell to keep them.

The best way to retain smart creatives is to not let them get too comfortable, to always come up with ways to make their jobs interesting.

But often it takes more than interesting side projects to keep people engaged and prevent them from leaving. You need to prioritize the interests of the highly valued individual over the constraints of the organization.

There are numerous other cases like this, where smart creatives need or want to do something new and the company figures out a way to make it happen.

Do the best thing for the person and make the organization adjust.

Encouraging people to take on new roles can be institutionalized in the form of rotations, but it needs to be do...

our approach has always been to encourage job movement, to make it as easy as possible, and to make it a standard part of the management discussion. We discuss it in our staff meetings and one-on-ones: Who on your team is a good candidate for rotation? Where do they want to go? Do you think that is the best thing for them?

Make sure as you have these discussions that the employees in question are the good ones.

Managers are like kids trading goodies after a night of Halloween trick-or-treating: When you push them to rotate people off their teams, their inclination is to hang on to the Reese’s cups and M&Ms and get rid of the boxes of raisins. This may be good for them, but it’s bad for the company. It keeps the very bes...

Make managers trade away their M&Ms; let them keep their raisins.

focus your retention efforts on the stars, the leaders, and the innovators (not necessarily the same people), and do whatever it takes to keep them around. The loss of these people can have a big ripple effect, as they often inspire their followers to leave too.

Because people seldom leave over compensation, the first step to keeping them is to listen. They want to be heard, to be relevant and valued.

Help them take a longer-term perspective. How could staying at the company ultimately position them for much greater success when they do decide to leave? Have they considered the financial ramifications of leaving? Do they have a clear financial plan and a good sense of what they might be leaving behind? Listen to why they want to leave, and help them find a way to perhaps recharge their dilithium crystals while sticking around.

Then, if they want to continue the conversation, have a plan for how they can develop their career while staying. This demonstrates your commitment to their success, not just the company’s.

The best smart creatives often want to leave so they can go start something on their own. Don’t discourage this, but do ...

we usually advise them to stick around and continue to contribute at the company while they are working on their idea, and tell them that when they actually can convince us to invest, we’ll let them go with our best wishes (if not a check!). This is a hard-to-resist offer, and it has helped us retain numerous talented people.

“Just because a job ends, your relationship with your employee doesn’t have to…. The first thing you should do when a valuable employee tells you he is leaving is try to change his mind. The second is congratulate him on the new job and welcome him to your company’s alumni network.”

Reid h

Test yourself: If you could trade the bottom 10 percent of your team for new hires, would your organization improve? If so, then you need to look at the hiring process that yielded those low performers and see how you can improve it.

Another test: Are there members of your team whom, if they told you they were leaving, you would not fight hard to keep? If there are employees you would let go, then perhaps you should.

There are some people who actually enjoy firing. Beware of them. Firing instills a culture of fear that will inevitably fail, and “I’ll just fire them” is an excuse for not inves...

Google’s Hiring Dos and Don’ts Hire people who are smarter and more knowledgeable than you are. Don’t hire people you can...

Hire people who will add value to the product and our culture. Don’t hire people who won’...

Hire people who will get things done. Don’t hire people who just ...

Hire people who are enthusiastic, self-motivated, and passionate. Don’t hire peo...

Hire people who inspire and work well with others. Don’t hire people who...

Hire people who will grow with your team and with the company. Don’t hire people with narr...