I was having lunch with a friend. “So what does it really mean to be best place to work? He asked me. “Do you have ping pong tables? A beer tap on Friday afternoons? An exotic health insurance plan?”
It was soon after PCI had been named the #1 midsize company to work for in Texas for the second time by Texas Monthly magazine and the Texas Association for Business … continue reading
When Google went public in August of 2004, Google co-founder Sergey Brin wrote a letter in the prospectus for potential investors:
“Our employees, who have named themselves Googlers, are everything… We have been lucky to recruit many creative, principled and hardworking stars. We hope to recruit many more in the future. We will reward and treat them well. We provide many unusual benefits for our employees, including meals free of charge, … continue reading
In his book, Work Rules! Laszlo Bock, Google’s longtime head of People Operations, lists the decisions managers at Google cannot make unilaterally:
Whom to hire
Whom to fire
How someone’s performance is rated
How much to increase someone’s salary or give a bonus or stock grant
Who wins awards for great management
Whom to promote
When code is of sufficient quality to be incorporated into the Google code base
Final … continue reading
In his book Work Rules!, Google’s Chief People Officer for ten years Laszlo Bock shares information about two Nike t-shirt factories in Mexico.
The first plant gives their workers more freedom. Leaders ask their associates to help set targets, organize themselves into teams, decide how the work would be divided up, and grant them authority to stop production when they see problems.
The second plant? Not so much. Workers are given strict … continue reading
