Build: An Unorthodox Guide to Making Things Worth Making

by Tony Fadell

Why? Why do we have to help a team that isn’t Google? Over the subsequent months, every time we had to clarify yet again for customers that Nest was separate from Google, our internal reputation took another hit.

Google didn’t have Steve Jobs. It had Larry Page and Sergey Brin—both brilliant and savvy entrepreneurs, but they didn’t have Steve’s fighting spirit, born from multiple near-career-death experiences.

The majority of big Google acquisitions other than YouTube had been less than successful.

By the time we’d been consumed, they were already hungry again, moving on to the next meal.

There was no time to make sure we were settling nicely in the belly of the beast, no interest in checking with us. We were just last night’s dinner.

But culture doesn’t work that way—you can’t repaint an old factory and show the workers a training video and think you’ve made any kind of difference. You have to tear the whole thing down and rebuild it again.

Most people and companies need a near-death experience before they can really change.

Unfortunately, you can’t truly know a culture until you’re in it. It’s like dating—when two people are interested in each other, they put their best foot forward, keep up appearances. Things get much more real when they move in together and get married. That’s when you learn your wife leaves dishes in the sink to “soak” for a few days. It’s when you realize your husband always forgets to clean up his toenail trimmings.

Who knows? Can’t run the experiment twice.

Keep in mind there’s a difference between benefits and perks:

But when perks are always free, appear constantly, and are treated like benefits, your business will suffer.

An oversupply of perks hurts a company’s bottom line and, contrary to popular belief, employee morale.

A friend once proudly told me, “I bring my wife flowers every week.” He expected my admiration, I think. What romance! What generosity! I said, “What?! I would never do that.” I bring my wife flowers from time to time, but it’s always a surprise.

You should absolutely do nice things for your employees. You should surely reward them for their hard work. But you have to remember how the human brain works. There’s a psychology to entitlement.

When people pay for something, they value it. If something is free, it is literally worthless. So if employees get a perk all the time, then it should be subsidized, not free.

If something happens only rarely, it’s special. If it happens all the time, the specialness evaporates.

Steve Jobs almost never gave out free Apple products as gifts. He didn’t want employees to devalue the very things they were working on. He believed if they are worthwhile and important, then you should treat them as such.

After the skyrocketing costs of Alphabet, we tried to trim down some of the options at the cafe. Still plenty of amazing food but no more pho station. No more mini-muffins. There was immediate protest, a universal “What the hell? You can’t take our mini-muffins!”

It was almost as bad as when we had to outlaw takeout containers after we realized a ton of people weren’t staying late to work—they were hanging out until dinner, then shoveling a full meal into to-go boxes for their families and taking off.

The whole point of serving dinner was to reward employees who were working incredibly hard. But because it was free, people took advantage of it. I...

A couple of years before that, Taco Tuesday had been a treat. People were delighted when the fruit box got delivered. But now there was a new pr...

As the number of perks increase, people’s reason for being at their job can begin to blur as well.

getting those perks was only briefly satisfying—they lost their value over time. So they kept trying to get more and more. That became their focus.

At no point should perks define your business or drag it down.

But stuffing your face full of them from morning to night isn’t exactly a recipe for happiness. Just as dessert shouldn’t come before dinner, perks shouldn’t come before the mission you’re there to achieve.

The perks should be a sprinkle of sugar on top.

They say “A captain should go down with the ship.” I say bullshit. If the ship is obviously sinking, then the passengers will probably notice—at that point it’s the job of the captain to stay aboard until everyone’s safely in the lifeboats.

However, if you’re a CEO or high-level executive and you can see the water level rising before everyone else, then it’s your responsibility to signal clear and present danger to your team.

the good times won’t last forever.

As we’re writing this, Zhang Yiming, the founder and CEO of ByteDance, the creators of TikTok, announced that he’s resigning.

“The truth is, I lack some of the skills that make an ideal manager,” he said. “I’m more interested in analyzing organizational and market principles.”

When you’re a founder, leaving your company can feel like a death.

There’s a reason people in some cultures wear black for twelve months after a death. That’s how long it takes to come to terms with this kind of loss.

In the end, there are two things that matter: products and people. What you build and who you build it with. The things you make—the ideas you chase and the ideas that chase you—will ultimately define your career. And the people you chase them with may define your life.

The products have changed, the companies have changed, but the relationships haven’t. And now my life is all about relationships. Now my product is people.

“Tony’s experience can be applied to any builder or creator anywhere in the world. The challenges are always the same, and Tony shares a number of insights on how to navigate them.”