Three things I've learnt at Google

Today is my last day at Google! (I’ll share what I’m doing next in a few weeks time.)

It feels both different and similar to my last move, when I left HSBC. Different because, when I left HSBC, my memories were of experiences from all over the world, whereas most of my time at Google has been spent in my study at home, talking to people on video. The same because, in both cases, the memories of people are more important than the memories of places. And the same again because, like every company I’ve worked for, I’ve learnt a lot in my time at Google, and plan to take those lessons with me on my next adventure.

The list of things I’ve learnt about at Google is long and varied, and includes things that have enriched my life, many of them not directly related to my role: a trans awareness course that changed my understanding of the world, participation in an AI ethics reading group that challenged my understanding of complex topics, and coaching on creativity and flow states that shifted my understanding of myself.

There are many more lessons than could be included in a single article, but three stand out for me: lessons about platform, productivity and people.

Platform

I joined Google Cloud because I believe that Cloud promises a revolution in enterprise computing, and can liberate companies from the constraints of their legacy architectures. Having seen the power of the technology platform within Google, I hold that belief more strongly than ever.

Cloud platforms are much more than somebody else’s infrastructure: they are fully architected, comprehensively instrumented, software defined, homogenous, global scale platforms managed through APIs. The power of such platforms is astonishing, and is core to the success of Google and other digital giants.

The growth of the Cloud business makes this power available to everybody, and it feels more urgent than ever to make the most of it. To do this, companies need to be wholehearted, comprehensive, strong willed and persistent in their move to Cloud: I’ve seen at first hand how hard this move can be, but it is worth it.

Productivity

As companies move to Cloud, they have lots of choices about what to optimise for and who to optimise for. Infrastructure costs or ease of management? Security or speed of innovation? Modernisation or migration? It can take companies a long while to realise that the best thing to optimise for is developer productivity.?

This doesn’t seem to be a debate at Google, where it seems to be understood that some of the most valuable time spent in the company is the time spent by developers writing code and getting it into production. Many companies don’t act as if this is the case: they load every coding hour with many more hours of processes, approvals, oversight and wait time.

In Google, aided by the underlying platform, it’s clear that developer productivity matters, and that it is optimised for. This might not be apparent from listening to internal Google chat: Googlers can be very vocal, and are happy to point out when things could be better, especially with tools and processes. But this constant feedback is itself a sign of a continuous drive towards better productivity.

(If I had more space, I’d talk about reliability too, and explore whether productivity drives reliability or vice versa: a topic for a future article.)

People

Despite all of the folklore about the Google interview process and how hard it is to get in (and the raging imposter syndrome that you experience when you do get in), it turns out that, in the end, all those wonderful Google people are just . . . people. And that’s a good thing. It would be weird and disturbing if one of the companies building technology for the world was made up of people who were completely different from the rest of us.

However, there is a difference to most other companies I have worked for. One of the key aspects of Google culture is to enable people to be their authentic selves at work. This may not sound particularly profound: after all, aren’t we always ourselves? How could we be anybody else? Yet, if we reflect, we realise how much corporate environments encourage us to be a different version of ourselves, and not always a better version. My colleagues at Google have encouraged me to be me, and I can’t say enough about how much of a difference that makes. It has manifested itself in the high standards that Googlers hold their leaders to, and the value placed on feedback, whether informal or as part of the regular performance process.?

These lessons about people, and the memories of Googlers and customers I have had the privilege to work with will stay with me longest. But it’s time to take my next step and learn the next set of lessons!

(Views in this article are my own.)