Work Rules!: Insights from Inside Google That Will Transform How You Live and Lead by Laszlo Bock is a behind the scenes glimpse into the “People Operations” of Google, the mammoth internet company.
Laszlo explains Google wasn’t always a global leader. It started out like every other company- with a couple of dedicated people and a big dream.
After some background, Laszlo gives step-by-step ways to improve your own business, whatever that may be, from the inside-out while remaining true to the mission that led to the creation of your company in the first place.
It’s clear from this book that Google is an engineer-dominated workplace. Every decision from hiring to employee perks is tested and the numbers are crunched to justify the expense, time spent, etc.
To be honest, psychology tests, graphs, and in-depth analysis isn’t really my thing. I enjoy a more artsy approach to the world and so the nitty-gritty of Laszlo’s work wasn’t that interesting to me.
In <i>Work Rules</i>, I was hoping for more insider stories than engineering problems, but that’s not how the book was written.
That’s not to say that there isn’t value to be had in this read. My take-away chapters were “It’s Not All Rainbows and Unicorns” and “What You Can Do Starting Tomorrow.”
In ‘It’s Not All Rainbows and Unicorns,’ Laszlo gives the reader moments in Google’s history when their policies didn’t really work and how they got through the crisis. It was heavy on dramatic stories and I enjoyed it quite a lot.
In ‘What You Can Do Starting Tomorrow,’ Laszlo boils down his previous chapters into ten steps for businesses to take right now. If you don’t have time to dig through the entire book, ‘What You Can Do Starting Tomorrow’ gives you a pretty thorough overview.
If you enjoyed <i>Work Rules!</i>, you may enjoy The Happiness Advantage by Shawn Achor. Shawn explains, in an engaging manner, many of the principles that Google has adopted to improve their employees’ quality of life.
I received a free advanced reader’s copy of this book through Goodreads First Reads. FTC guidelines: check! And thank you for reading.
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