Careless People (a story of where i used to work) by Sarah-Wynn Williams

I had a naive belief that the new age technology companies are not as evil as the old time tobacco or oil companies. I believed that we as a society have evolved to have tighter regulations against how much a company can misbehave under selfish interests. That belief got shattered after the first round of layoffs in Google, while i was working there, in 2022.  Reading the stories of people who were laid off, even women on maternity leave, and the absolute ruthless and random handling of the situation planted a doubt in my mind against this pristine status of these big tech companies. 

In my first stint at Google, i had expected to come across extremely smart people who were keen to solve problems. I was prepared for my product manager craft to be brutally scrutinised, and in that process grow as a product manager. Not only did i not encounter these smart people, more disappointingly navigating the bureaucratic corridors seemed more important to most people than building something useful. This had already dented an idealistic image that i had in my mind. That image would completely break apart when i and my entire team would eventually get laid off as well, in March 2022. 

Donald Trump winning the US elections in 2024 seemed like a true test for the ideological principles (what did they stand for) of the big tech companies, with the ideological landscape in the US shifting right-wards. It looks like most tech companies caved in and were happy to let go of the 'inclusive' programs like DEI. Google for example dropped a caveat to not use AI for military technologies from their AI principles. Meta's CEO Mark Zuckerberg's 5 minutes video around some fundamental changes in Facebook is a great moment to highlight this change, or rather caving into the political pressures. 

In this context, Careless People articulates and re-iterates what seems to be emerging as plain facts, to me personally through my experience and to the broader world as well. Big tech companies are not so different from those old timey evil oil companies. They share a fundamental framework - that they are institutes for profit. Everything else is PR. In the context of the book for Meta, it could mean compromising of privacy of its user to enter into a new market (China), compromising on fact checking fake news which would lead to riots and deaths in Myanmar, or being open to be used by despots and dictators to win elections - as long as it makes ads dollars. 

If you abstract out the details of the busineeses, these organisations are nothing but a collection of type-A people who want to succeed no matter what. And there are not creative ways to define success here, its the same old better job, more money, brushing shoulders with celebrities. I dont know why it is not a surprise that the companies they build turn out the way they do. 

Of course, everything on the book can and should be taken as face value. I felt the book tends to simplify the narrative. The thing that didn't sit well with me throughout the book is the author's holier-than-thou tone, which suggests every top management person at Facebook is evil except for the her, and she tried her best to change things, and failed. Anyone who had worked in a large organisation knows it is not as black & white as that. A double click on why people were the way they were, and why they did not heed the writers advice would have been more useful, than 'Mark Zuckerberg bad'.

Despite that, the book captures an important truth of how big tech companies operate. And its a very engaging read. This is the fastest i have run through 300 pages. Maybe because it also reads like gossip for someone workin in big tech, and who does not like gossip. Except, this is a very harmful gossip. 

As a redemptive arch, i hope someone somewhere spits on a big tech HRs face the next time they ask the interviewee to 'think about the user first'.

The Culture Code by Daniel Coyle

The Culture Code by Daniel Coyle was a Christmas gift from my manager to the team during our product offsite. There were a lot of conversations around the 'team culture' during the offsite, and i was primed to read this book. 

Usually, I carry a healthy skepticism for popular books in the 'business' genre. While some of them are good, it is difficult to spot the good ones from the bad. And, even with the ones i like, i dont know how much of what one reads sticks - in other words, i am not sure if they make you a better business person.

But this book had a seed of a genuinely good idea. That idea, broadly, is that highly successfully groups are successfully more because of how they work with each other, how invested they are in the work, and how aligned with the goal - that is, the 'group culture' - than how skilled they are, or where they are based on any other factors typically associated with success. The author claims to have deep dove with various successful groups, including interestingly a group of successful thieves, and consistently came upon this same idea as a reason for their success. 

Its a genuine idea, and the author has document well his learnings from the various groups. But he ends up falling into this trope of popular non-fiction books - where the world is entirely explained by the core idea the book is proposing. In this case, the success of groups lay only at the doorstep of their 'group culture'. I feel thats a simplistic and hence incorrect argument. 

If you let go of that transgression, there are some good ideas in the book. I note here some ideas from the book that i liked:

Feeling safe and feeling like you belong to the group is a healthy pre-requisite for building a good culture. The author talks about how our primal brain still perceives 'safety' they way it would have when we lived in small communities - it needs continuous re-enforcement, and a steady accumulation of almost invisible cues to reassert safety and belongingness. 

Create a collision rich space - across hierarchies, roles and teams. Enable people to see each other, work in close proximity to each other. Accidental hallway conversations and bump ups are a great way for people to feel they belong and create cohesion. The book talks about one director who thought of his core job as connecting smart people with other smart people. This also highlights how you don't need to be an extrovert, life-of-the-party kind of person to create great belongingness and culture. It could almost be a science that way. 

Sunday mass at Church as a north star for team rituals. The mass is a gathering that people feel about so strongly. They participate willingly, invite other people willingly, and the rituals are designed to pull people in, especially the new comers. That should be the north star for a tea ritual. 

Pick up trash. The book talks about the McDonalds founder who'd pick up trash around the restaurant at the end of every day. While seeming not directly linked with culture, i felt housekeeping activities like that not only binds you closer to your work but also ceans out the rough edges from your work. 

Endorse catchphrases. This is about how you communicate culture. While i thought these were cheesy, i recently learnt how they could be used effectively. When my skip level boss joined the team, he said 'run to the fire' as one of the ways to handle problems in the product. That was his way of saying 'don't wait for the problem to grow or ignore it thinking you'd solve it later after your other prioritise, if there is a problem you tackle it right away'. But 'run to the fire' is just better, and it stuck with me. Creating catchphrase which are simple and capture you culture better, i believe now, is a great way to communicate culture. 

How might i take ideas from this book to my current team at Google?

Team rituals - We need to meet once a week, in person, talk a bit about work and a bit about us. We also need to meet outside of work to get to know each others lives. I always looked down on these 'team outings' but i come to realise how important they are (if done right). 

Common vision - Establish why the team is important and what they are working towards. Get a buy in from people on this goal. 

Problem's board - If the new team works on a bunch of quality problems, establish a problems board where every identified problem is written on a sticky note, and have people pick from the problems.