This book is based on the same research as How to be a Star at Work. There is quite a bit of hyperbole in the beginning that seemed like standard journalism – taking an outlier and suggesting it supports the writer’s hypothesis. Things got better in the section on research on expertise. The author collates several studies that confirm that particular fields have “a number,” that is, a number of years of hard intense study that it takes to be a ranked expert in that field. What they find is that “child prodigies” such as Mozart or Tiger Woods had father’s that were teachers, and they started learning before age 5. So by the age of 17, they had over 10 years of experience. And even then, Mozart’s best work was years latter. Also among research findings was the concept of deliberate practice – that practice on things you are not good at, that to you “are hard,” is what separates experts from the tier below. The author’s try to extrapolate the concept of deliberate practice to management and leadership – this section feels rather hollow.
Monthly Archives: September 2013
Tips for Noogler Engineers
Tips for Noogler Engineers is an article on Piaw’s Blog. Apparently a Noogler is a new Google employee. The article points out how to climb the Google ladder. Seems to apply to LM and other large companies. Sad that mentoring and 20% time are possible bad things – they may get you no credit. This also agrees with content in How to be a Star at Work on getting on the most important projects, skip the grunge work.
Other good articles:
- Culture. He talks about innovation at Google, and speed of innovation.
- Twitter Presentation. Lesson’s from Google and Facebook as you face hyper growth. Covers technical issues, people, and process. Most interesting technical comment: don’t build your own general infrastructure stuff. Most interesting people comment is on promotion systems, and how peer based review systems fail after Dunbar’s Number (~150). On process, reward the grungy painful work!
- Google and Facebook. Or more appropriately titled “5 Google Engineering Management Mistakes” – a presentation that Piaw put together for Facebook. HB needs to read slide #6. Slide #8 talks about how non-engineers used the peer review bonus program to get engineers to do things for them. How about tying hiring to management incentives? Interesting observation on slide #13 – you need to work with “staff engineers,” that is senior engineers, in order to get promoted at Google.