Work Rules!: Insights from Inside Google That Will Transform How You Live and Lead

by Laszlo Bock

we equally weight each individual’s feedback on the candidate. A subordinate’s feedback is at least as valuable, if not more so, as a hiring manager’s.

virtually no single interviewer’s assessment was by itself that helpful.

As has been found in other settings,xxx the “wisdom of the crowds” seemed to apply to making hiring decisions as well.

So we continue reporting the individual interview feedback scores but emphasize the average score.

Sixth, we rely on disinterested reviewers.

In addition to using structured interviews and the hiring attributes, we deliberately include at least three layers of review for each candidate.

The hiring committee takes a first look, recommending whether or not to mo...

If the hiring committee rejects the candidate, the process stops there. If they are supportive of a candidate, their feedback is added to the hiring packet and sent to the Senior Leader Reviews.

The most common reason for rejection at this stage in the process? Culture.

the cultural values of transparency and voice are widely held and core to how we operate.

If the Senior Leader Review is supportive, then Larry is sent each week’s recommended hires. The report includes links to the detailed hiring packets for every candidate as well as summaries about each candidate and the feedback and recommendations from each successive level of review.

There are four simple principles that can help even the smallest team do much, much better at hiring.

It took years of research and experimentation to figure out how to hire more efficiently.

by far the best recruiting technique is having a core of remarkable people.

So how do you create your own self-replicating staffing machine?

Set a high bar for quality.

A good rule of thumb is to hire only people who are better than you. Do not compromise. Ever.

Find your own candidates.

Assess candidates objectively.

Give candidates a reason to join.

This is easy to write, but I can tell you from experience that it’s very hard to do.

Managers hate the idea that they can’t hire their own people. Interviewers can’t stand being told that they have to follow a certain format for the interview or for their feedback.

Do not give in to the pressure. Fight for quality.

If you’re committed to transforming your team or your organization, hiring better is the single best way to do it. It takes will and patience, but it works. Be willing to concentrate your people investment on hiring. And never settle.

There’s one other beneficial effect of hiring this way: In most organizations, you join and then have to prove yourself.

At Google, there’s such faith in the quality of the hiring process that people join and on their first day are truste...

It turns out that we are not skeptical about managers per se.

Rather, we are profoundly suspicious of power, and the way managers historically have abused it.

While a manager doesn’t necessarily abuse any of these sources of power, the potential for abuse exists.

each of us is susceptible to the conveniences and small thrills of power.

At the same time, responsibility for creating (and fighting!) hierarchy doesn’t fall solely on the shoulders of managers.

We employees often create our own...

One of the challenges we face at Google is that we want people to feel, think, and act like owners rather than employees. But human beings are wired to defer to authority, se...

Humans turn out to be awfully good rule followers.

In 2007, we introduced hiring budgets because we were hiring more people than we could absorb.

Each team now had a finite number of people they could hire each year. I was stunned by how quickly we shifted from an abundance mentality to one of scarcity, as jobs becam...

Roles would be held open longer than ever because teams wanted to be sure they were getting the best person. Internal transfers became more difficult bec...

It works a bit better now. We addressed some of these challenges by changing the rules so some teams could go o...

even at a company that aspires to give people so much freedom, the introduction of simple rules caused large changes in behavior.

The best Googlers apply their own judgment and break the rules when it makes sense.

Managers have a tendency to amass and exert power. Employees have a tendency to follow orders.

What’s mind-blowing is that many of us play both roles, manager and employee, at the same time.

We each have experienced the frustration of a controlling manager, and we have each experienced the frustration of mana...

“Does your manager trust you?” is a profound question.

If you believe people are fundamentally good, and if your organization is able to hire well, there is nothing to fear from giving your people freedom.

The first step to mass empowerment is making it safe for people to speak up.

This is why we take as much power away from managers as we can. The less formal authority they have, the fewer carrots and sticks they have to lord over their teams, and the more latitude the teams have to innovate.

creating an environment of mass empowerment where employees feel and act like owners takes more than managing hiring and promotions in novel ways.

To mitigate our innate human tendency to seek hierarchy, we try to remove the signifiers of power and status.

there are really only four meaningful, visible levels at Google: individual contributor, manager, ...