April 30, 2004 12:24 PM

How Google views its workers
Posted by Jason Butlerat 12:24 PM

Google filed for an IPO this week. Among the items they released was a letter from the founders.

I found the following passage, in which they describe the company's plans for its employees, especially enlightening.

Our employees, who have named themselves Googlers, are everything. Google is organized around the ability to attract and leverage the talent of exceptional technologists and business people. We have been lucky to recruit many creative, principled and hard working 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, doctors and washing machines. We are careful to consider the long term advantages to the company of these benefits. Expect us to add benefits rather than pare them down over time. We believe it is easy to be penny wise and pound foolish with respect to benefits that can save employees considerable time and improve their health and productivity.

The significant employee ownership of Google has made us what we are today. Because of our employee talent, Google is doing exciting work in nearly every area of computer science. We are in a very competitive industry where the quality of our product is paramount. Talented people are attracted to Google because we empower them to change the world; Google has large computational resources and distribution that enables individuals to make a difference. Our main benefit is a workplace with important projects, where employees can contribute and grow. We are focused on providing an environment where talented, hard working people are rewarded for their contributions to Google and for making the world a better place.

I ::heart:: Google.

Steve Bailey, on the other hand, finds them to be full of it.

Two sentences into the letter Google's two founders wrote to all those potential investors panting to get a piece of maybe the most highly anticipated IPO in history, and I am already gagging. Hey, I love Google, too, but maybe Mom and Dad (or their investment bankers, at least) should remind Larry Page and Sergey Brin of one thing: Like many smart people who came before them, they are running a company. They are not saving the world.

John Battelle thinks their attitudes are going to backfire.

That thought came to mind as I read the five-page, Warren Buffet-inspired letter which opens Google's S1, entitled "An Owner's Manual" for Google Shareholders, which was written in the first person by Larry Page (full text in extended entry below). I can only imagine the eyes rolling at Kleiner Perkins, Morgan Stanley, and the rest of the veterans as the founders insisted on this, and I can imagine this letter is what broke the camel's back last week and engendered the "let's not get too cute" comment in the New York Times. The letter, which is unusual for an S1, borders on hubris. It's personal, discursive, and rather defensive in tone, and it attempts to address an investor's most pressing questions about the company. It claims, several times over, that Google is different, special, and remarkable. It also acts as something of a caveat, a pardon for future sins, claiming that going forward, Google will not act like public companies are supposed to act, because it is unique and long-term focused. "We're different, and better than others," is the tone. "Don't ask why we do things the way we do them. We know best." To be honest, the letter made me cringe a bit. "Yow," I said to myself (and now to you...). "Do they really want to set themselves up like this?"

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