How working at Google kept us small

Niamh McElwain and I both entered Google through the back door - as contractors who had to prove ourselves. Folks who didn’t make it were taken to “that room”, the ones who "made it" were converted to full time employees. Our first roles were not glamourous - in fact these roles were later replaced by?algorithms. But, we made it. We were the lucky ones. And we stayed far longer than both of us ever imagined (me 7 years, Niamh a crazy 16 years!)

We joined Google in 2005, in our mid-twenties, and it’s fair to say that the experience shaped who we are today. We owe a lot to Google: our career, life-long friendships, strong work ethic, our ability to deal with constant change, and some $$$. It’s hard to imagine our lives without it.

However, this is not an article about how great life at Google was. No, it’s about how Google and other big sexy companies like it prevent us from reaching our full potential.

This might be the case for you.

“Google - where the best go to rest”

As part of my interview process at Square, I had a phone call with the amazing?Fran?oise Brougher. She used to be an exec at Google and was now leading the business side of Square. I asked her what made her decide to leave Google, and she replied, (I hope she won’t mind me sharing this)?“Google is where the best go to rest.”?She went on to explain how some employees got stuck there and lost their entrepreneurial spark. There was too much process, too many procedures, and simply too many barriers to getting things done. It was the first time I had heard this perspective, but it put words on what I was starting to see. Over the years I’ve come to realize how true her statement was

When I left Google, I went through an adjustment period as my identity shifted. I still met with Googlers, but many of our conversations felt petty - it was all about promotion, performance grievances, workload, reorgs - frankly, things that didn’t matter outside of Google. Incredibly smart people were stuck in the hamster wheel, tired of it all, yet unable to see past the wheel.

As Praveen Seshadri put it in his?excellent post?(Thank you Alonso for sharing):

Like mice, [Googlers] are trapped in a maze of approvals, launch processes, legal reviews, performance reviews, exec reviews, documents, meetings, bug reports, triage, OKRs, H1 plans followed by H2 plans, all-hands summits, and inevitable reorgs. The mice are regularly fed their “cheese” (promotions, bonuses, fancy food, fancier perks) and despite many wanting to experience personal satisfaction and impact from their work, the system trains them to quell these inappropriate desires and learn what it actually means to be “Googley” — just don’t rock the boat.

It’s funny how I got converted from temp to full time, then promoted 4 times - and nobody outside of Google ever cared about it. My “performance” may have been pretty good there, but it was still within a self contained system. But lord almighty did I work my a$$ off for those tokens of self worth. I was clearly one of those folks on the hamster wheel.

Drinking the kool aid

At the time we worked there, Google was ranked #1 Best Place to Work. Best benefits. Most loved brand. Most innovative company. People did a double-take when you mentioned working there (especially in the US) - like OMG YOU MUST BE SOOO SMART! I never felt like I was. In fact, I had initially said no to Google’s job offer. I’d had a competing offer from a company who created gaming computers and it sounded way more appealing to my nerd brain (For once I listened to my dad who basically said: Saying no to Google? Are you f*** crazy or what?)

I thought I would stay at Google for a year or two and move on. But Google impressed me - my manager was very good, the people around me were amazing to work with, and the company cared about its employees. The job market is a scary place, and we were in job heaven. I mean, there was a full-sized bowling alley in my building. Why would I want to go anywhere else?

Working at Google was like living in a bubble. An echo chamber reinforced by its campus-like environment, where everything was provided for you: hairdresser, laundry, meals, car oil check, volleyball and pilate classes. It quickly became your everything, often to the detriment of?living a well-rounded life. I’m not blaming Google, they created a great system, and hired people who get stimulated by working with like-minded people. We did it to ourselves.

What made us feel small

1. The conviction of being the best

There is something awe-inspiring when 10 million users is considered small, when success is expressed in billions. When you’re seen as a go-to for innovation, scale, and work practices. And Google had this in spades. But hearing about your successes constantly can breed arrogance. It shows up in insidious ways, but I think this example is quite telling:

My team at Square was doing listening tours with other companies. We took the time to ask questions, to share insights, and to get curious in the hopes of better serving our customers. “The funny things with folks from companies like Google, Facebook, or Amazon…”, explained a co-worker at the time, “…is that they’re more than happy to tell you about everything they do well - but they never ask about what you do well - or anything you can share.” Nevermind that Square’s Net Promoter Score was one of (if not) the highest in its industry. What could a tiny fintech company teach those giants?

Why look outside when everything is “the best of” inside?

2. A breeding ground for imposter syndrome

You know one of the questions Googlers asked me most, after I left? What’s the calibre of people I’m working with now? On one hand, you can see the arrogance, on the other, there’s a lot of truth to it. Most Googlers I know are smart, humble, and hard-working. They think on their feet. They think big and act fast.

But interacting with amazing people on a daily basis can also make you feel inadequate, and heighten that imposter voice in your head. I feel like the term was invented for Googlers. I mean, the very first intern I managed had founded an NGO helping more than a thousand students in Africa get an education. His work had been recognized by Bill Clinton. He had started this NGO while at university. What was I going to teach that kid?

Here are some fun facts about Googlers:

• You want to learn about quantum physics or the latest best practices on a cutting edge topic? Why don’t you talk to that person 2 floors down whose book sold millions on the topic? (true story)
• You like ice skating? Why not having lunch with this ex-Olympian who happens to lead a team of 100+ people (true story)
• You’re training for a 40 km marathon? That’s cute. There’s 15 people around you who run 200 km at night in -34C while playing violin on one hand and juggling fire torches with the other, and still kill it at work the next day (not entirely true, but you get the point).

I wonder how many Googlers have written books, climbed Everest, or [insert insane achievement]. It’s hard not to look around and feel like you don’t amount to much when you don’t do these things. If you’re not careful, this can make you feel like you are not enough.

3. Google’s high-achieving culture leads to short term thinking

If is wasn’t clear from the paragraphs above, there’s a bunch of achievers at Google. Couple that with a dysfunctional performance evaluation process (360 overdose!) that Google has been trying to improve for years, and you get a culture where people are rewarded for high volumes of work and smashing their todo lists.

A quote from?this BBC article?about insecure overachievers fits in particular:

People know that they are being directly measured against their colleagues. But because they don’t actually know how their colleagues are doing, they set themselves incredibly high standards, just to be sure. And because everyone in the system is doing this, the standards just get higher and higher, requiring everyone to work harder and harder.

How do you differentiate folks who are “the best of the best”?

When you’re Google, you do it in 2 ways:

1. You rate folks on a bell curve, taking into account volume and impact of work
2. You encourage people to give each other feedback

But it creates counter-productive behaviours:

• When the standards are so high, people naturally focus on extraneous details to differentiate performance. Let’s say you give an amazing presentation but there were 2 spelling mistakes on a slide - what do you think the feedback is going to be about?
• Smashing your to-do list puts you in tunnel-vision mode. You don’t have time for thinking big when there’s a very strong bias to action. You narrow your purview to what’s in front of you.

4. Thinking that Google is the end all be all.

I enjoyed my time working at Square more than at Google. I enjoy running my business even more. It’s been liberating to work at smaller companies, with a stronger sense of purpose, and a lot less pressure. It has allowed me to work smarter and in turn to have greater impact. But for many ambitious people, working in a big sexy company means you’ve made it. You have arrived. Nothing can ever top that experience. But it’s a vicious cycle: the longer you stay, the more convinced you are that this is the best place you can be. Even if you?know?you’re not doing the work you love, or having the impact you’d like to have. Hello ?Golden Handcuffs?.

New life after Google

Looking at Niamh’s transition from Google after 16 years, I know she’s growing more right now than she was toward the end of her time at Google. Here is an example to illustrate this:

We had just formed our company. An ex-colleague of mine recommended us for a job. It turned out to be the CEO of a well-known US company. They needed help running a sparkling leadership offsite for their top 30 people globally. Niamh and the CEO hit it off on the call. We created a proposal for their offsite that they loved. BOOM, like that our first client was a major project.

We ended up not doing it because the US had banned flights from Europe. ARGH DAMM YOU COVID!! But the lesson still stands: this CEO would never have spoken to Niamh had she stayed at Google. And really, Niamh and I were the right people for what this CEO needed. Instead, they probably would have spoken to her boss’s boss’s boss who would have gone through the hierarchy chain to find a great facilitator. Worse still, Niamh saw herself as that facilitator - a very very good one, but still: a facilitator. As a business owner, she’s now seen as an expert in her field. That was already the case at Google, but it was overshadowed by some of the stuff we’ve described above. That’s the case for so many talented folks in big sexy companies. The system sucks their talent away from them.

It is also true that we may never have had that opportunity had we not worked at Google. I don’t want to discount this. But here’s the thing: the smart Googlers looked around. They networked outside, they made connections, they (tried to) have a life outside. They didn’t lose perspective.

I know a few folks who didn’t do that well within Google, but when they left - they achieved greater success than ever, setting up their own companies and/or pursuing meaningful adventures. It’s after their time at Google that they really started to shine. They didn’t let the big sexy company define them, but they leveraged everything it had taught them about themselves and the world of work - to build a story that was theirs to own.

What about you?

Life is messy, change relentless, and sometimes we’re neck-deep in ??. At Midlife Stuntman, I share hard-won insights on chaos, growth, and laughing through life’s uncomfortable lessons — French irreverence, zero platitudes, and yes, sometimes ??.