How Google Works

by Eric Schmidt

While it’s hard to imagine now, when we started Google Maps, people thought that our goal of mapping the entire world, including photographing every street, would prove impossible. So if the past is any indicator of our future, today’s big bets won’t seem so wild in a few years’ time.

And we conclude by reasking ourselves another favorite question: What could be true in five years?

Eric’s maxim, which he learned from Bill Gates, is to spend 80 percent of your time on 80 percent of your revenue.

Think big, act small

To this day the rule of thumb is that at least half of Google employees (aka Googlers) should be engineers.

Larry hated it. “Have you ever seen a scheduled plan that the team beat?” he asked. Um, no. “Have your teams ever delivered better products than what was in the plan?” No again. “Then what’s the point of the plan? It’s holding us back. There must be a better way. Just go talk to the engineers.”