The Marketing Farce

Before I started the MBA program I had an established bias of how all marketing was a load of crap... Wharton's classes changed a whole lot of that perspective for me. For starters- the whole analytical aspect of marketing caught my attention, and as did the behavioral sciences element of it. I saw that if you put aside the bias, there are fascinating principles, observations and statistics that challenge our current understanding of how well we know and understand the human mind- as a participant, as a consumer and as our customer. There is much work to be done ahead- specially as we start factoring the social interactions into our models. (Something that my current company is exploring)

And then I attend Social Media Strategies Conference. And this is where I circle back to why marketing gets the bad name. A "marketing expert" speaker here claims "over 15 years of online marketing experience"- now that puts him pre-1993 days. Wow. No wonder people like me develop opinions like mine about marketing :-/

Maybe Wharton just made me pay more attention to numbers then ever before. Gee thanks! :-)

Lessons from former Googlers

I am on a group of ex-Googlers and some recent threads over there caught my attention. I realized that there were some key lessons learned that could be useful to Google and other companies in general- lessons on hiring practices, managing people, compensation and incentives, etc. These lessons also apply to some degree for candidates interested in working at Google (or other similar companies)

Before I dive into these observations I have to say that I left Google for my own reasons and it was by far the finest companies that I've ever worked at. It is a great company that I absolutely respect and admire. I really am thankful for all the great experiences I had at Google- From playing volleyball with Sergey to having crazy MySQL optimization discussions with the amazing Stacey. My pleasant experiences certainly outweigh the collateral annoyances expressed in the summary of fellow ex-Googlers below. But just like every company I've worked for, they are not perfect- the lessons here help us understand where they could do better (and for any company that can learn from these observations)

1. The hiring process
• Confusions along the way- Google has a rather notoriously painful hiring process. One of the common confusions in that process is to get interviewed for the wrong position. Interestingly this observation was also noted from not just the ex-Googlers but also from some people that I had referred. Word of advice to candidates ready for their interviews at Google- always double-check the position you applied for with each person interviewing you. Sometimes this small up-front check may prevent a rather unfortunate result of a mismatched interview. If you are a company in this situation- keep the overall process transparent and as quick as possible; pay attention to the position and in case of a discrepancy, make it clear to the candidate why he or she is being evaluated for another position than their expectation.
  
• Low offers- The typical offers from Google are low. We've heard- "People don't work at Google for the money. They work at Google because they want to change the world!" The real observation here is that Google makes a concession for its brand name on your resume. Personally I think it's the market efficiency of brand names. Candidates- just factor this in your expectations. Companies- don't appear cocky about your brand- remember that this is a dangerous game to play and for most candidates a good offer is fundamentally its monetary value. You could get by with lower offers but this will in turn effect your retention rate. Once a candidate is done with the brand name on their resume, they'd be more than ready to seek a more fulfilling offer elsewhere.
  
• Long process- The hiring process at Google is long (typically 90 days or more!) Sometimes this has made it difficult for a candidate to wait that long. As a candidate you need to be prepared. And it's exceedingly challenging to weigh your offer with another unless you time it well. If you are a company- keep in mind that with a long process you may be losing a whole set of great candidates (specially if you have already spent time and effort in filtering them through some of the early levels)
  
• GPA and keyword cutoffs- Google used to receive a large number of resumes everyday when I was there, I suspect it is still very true. If a company has to go through a large set of resumes it has to resolve to a more scalable process like matching for keywords in resumes, or set an arbitrary cutoff like good academic pedigree, or certain GPA levels. If you are a candidate- you really need to work hard at building a very specific resume to the job that you are interested in- following very exact hints from the job requirements. Leave your GPA out of the resume if it is not spectacular- let a terrific experience build your case. If you are company facing this problem (and I don't know very many in today's world) then build a better filtering mechanism that does weigh in other factors and not just do a keyword match. Understand, for example, that there may very well be some excellent engineers that almost feel beneath their level to claim familiarity with hackneyed resume terms of "object-oriented concepts" when they have designed libraries for core Java.
  
• Little to no negotiations- An interestingly common observation seemed that there is a "take it or leave it" attitude when dealing with Google offers- mostly resulting in candidates taking it with relatively lower happiness. If you are a candidate- keep that in mind as you get closer to your offer (spend some time learning simple negotiation techniques) and ALWAYS negotiate even in spite of what this observation tells you. If you are a company, and feel proud of your negotiation skills, then keep an extra layer of sweetener to offer once the negotiations are done. This will ensure that the candidate joins your company with the level of enthusiasm and content that should come from a "happy" offer.
  
• Little transparency on job details- Back in the earlier days of Google, it was very common to be expected to join without knowing any specifics of your actual job. I personally know of at least one great candidate that refused an offer because Google wouldn't tell him what he'll be working on. I strongly suspect that this is now changing, but if you do experience this still here is my tip for candidates- Ask. In most cases you will likely be interviewed by your prospective peers and/or your manager. While a direct question like "what would I be working on?" may not get you much of an answer, an indirect question from which you can build a good inference could be more beneficial- "where do you see me as a good fit in what you do?" If you are company, do whatever NDA signing you have to do but make it more transparent for the candidate to get a better picture as he or she gets closer to the offer stage.
• The line outside the club- There is a fascinating marketing effect of the "line outside the club" that subconsciously makes us believe that what's on the inside must be worth it. If you are a candidate and know of such a line, don't jump to any conclusions. Evaluate what it would mean for you to be working at such a company (and the relevance of a specific job requirement) and your ability and willingness to wait in line. If you are a company doing this, be aware that you may just as well be turning away the really good candidates that are rushed by their circumstances.
  
• The recruiter- The typical recruiter is a contractor- with a term limited to 6 months (I don't know if this is industry specific) Given that the average process takes about 3 months, you can see that you will deal with more than one recruiter 50% of the time. Which means you as a candidate, have a coin-toss probability on either dealing with the same recruiter throughout your hiring process or be dealing with a newbie who is also juggling with taking over the list of prospective candidates from another/previous recruiter. Rather common and surprising expression that's often heard- "I think you are in, but bear with me as I learn more about Google."
  
  An unfortunate result of having short-term contractors is that they never really get up to speed on a certain job family well enough to make a positive difference. While it's easy for them to do academic pedigree checks or GPA cutoffs or keyword matching, they don't make job specific logical deductions. Eg. if the job requirement says the candidate should possess skill A and the resume reflects a job B which implicitly means that skill A was used but the resume does not specify skill A, this resume is most likely going to get tossed. The real sad part here is that most recruiters will typically have very little dis-incentive for making such mistakes. The large volume of resumes (and the fact they are over-tasked) makes it very easy to move on to the next case. As a candidate, you should really work hard at stating the obvious in your resume (without of course going overboard with it) The best way to get that is to literally have someone else review your resume.
  
  And to address the changing recruiter issue, if you are a candidate in this long process, build a good relationship with each recruiter but don't fall in love. They are professionals trained to give you the warm-comfy feeling about this process but they will switch their jobs on you. If you really want to factor this in your process, then ask your recruiter about how long they have been at their current job up-front. If you are a company and under the typical 6-month restriction then try and reduce the hiring process time or get rid of that 6-month resitriction, or hire recruiters! Keep in mind that the recruiter is the face of the company and changing faces in the middle of the process does not give a confident appeal to candidates. If you really can't improve on this, then at least set recruiters by appropriate stages of the hiring process so that a more natural and logical hand-off occurs when say a candidates goes from phone interviews to on-site.
  


2. Life as a Googler
   
• The perks- While there are numerous perks at Google that make it the "best company to work for" most of these perks are, in the words of an ex-Googler "family unfriendly." If a company offers free dinner it indirectly discourages spending enough time with one's family. This of course is less likely the case, if you are 20-something or are fresh out of college and love the campus feel of hanging around when you should really be socializing outside your work. If you are such an employee that's wide-eyed about these perks, take a step back and evaluate your overall situation. You are likely going to be very disappointed the day you decide to leave a company like Google and face the real world. If you are a company with such perks, be careful. You don't just want good dedicated employees, you also want happy ones that do have a life outside your campus.
  
  Another observation in the perks department- there is a serious dis-balance in the utility of a perk being offered and the same perk being taken away. Yes this is a fascinating example of mental accounting and Prospect theory at work here. To illustrate this take a look at this graph.
  
  
  The real interesting problem is when this starts to compound. Multiple adjustments do get compounded and the combined effect is much more pronounced. There is also an interesting thinking at play here which says "if I have a justification for why my free soda was taken away and that same justification seems to explain why my free massage was taken away, then no matter how ridiculous it sounds, my justification must be right."
  
  There isn't much to do as a consumer in this economic model of perks- you will mostly do what your personal behavioral finance guides to you to. But there is a lot to be learned if you are a company thinking about offering perks to your employees. Don't offer what you can't sustain.
  
• The actual work environment- The actual work environment is way more competitive than you've ever felt at any other company. A common observation amongst several ex-Googler friends of mine- it can be very demoralizing if you aren't the best in a group. My advice- If you are not the best in the group, don't take that to heart. Your contributions to the success of the group and the company are still going to be valuable whether you won the "best employee" award or not. If you are a company in such a spot, you have much more work cut out for you! While you want to encourage healthy personal and company growth, keep in mind that too much competition within the same group can be disastrous. Good and effective teams should have several "best employees" in non-conflicting categories. Awards should hence be focussed more on teams than individuals.
  
• The attitude- There seemed to be certain cases of discrepancies in individuals' behaviour in a team based on certain distinctions. The common ones seem to be whether you were an early employee or not, or whether you are an engineer or not. These are serious threats to the operational efficiencies of a team. These unfortunately were not uncommon observations. You do need to lookout for such problems and address them early on before it becomes a serious issue. This applies to both individuals and companies.
• The people manager- Most of the observations were on how poorly the relationship developed (or didn't) between individuals and managers. At least for the initial part of Google's explosive growth, the ratios of managers to direct reports were very high. While this supposedly kept the organization structure pretty flat, it didn't help build the much needed relationship between an employee and his manager who has 80 other reports. Companies need to take note that managing people is serious business and not just another task that a "technical leader" should grow into.
  

I do believe that these issues are all addressable to really make a company like Google, as perfect as it can get. If you were in Google management and had a say in it, what would you have done to retain some of your best talent?