Work Rules!: Insights from Inside Google That Will Transform How You Live and Lead

The book is written very thoughtfully and is entertaining to read. The author only sparingly uses personal anecdotes — the most common type of arguments found in many books on business — instead choosing to rely on a variety of examples from various disciplines such as economy, history, management theory, psychology, sports, cult videogames such as “Planescape: Torment”, and many others. These examples reinforce the author’s points and make the book more intellectually engaging and educative to read. 

The book is overall very focused, in-depth, and can be considered a comprehensive instruction on enhancing a company’s culture. Laszlo Bock clearly demonstrates that he has the vision, knowledge, and experience to back up his claims. He does not waste his time straying away from the topic of the book — corporate culture — to discuss less relevant matters such as personal development, search of yourself and other cliché topics all too common in business literature. 

In general, most of the advice the author gives is very useful, and, as of 2023, its applications can easily be seen throughout the business world. Google’s management culture with its empowered employees and entrenched horizontality is especially popular and is proven to create better working environments and improve performance. 

Finally, Bock’s main thesis – that people are fundamentally good, and you should trust your employees – is an incredibly powerful message and a good lesson not only to technology businesses, but to any organization that relies on collaboration and productivity.

The advice given by Mr. Bock in regard to hiring employees can be thought of as somewhat dated and only realistically appliable to software or other predominantly “white-collar” industries, and especially larger companies in these fields. For example, his approach to hiring for “as a long as it takes” to find a “superstar employee” may work for Google with its gigantic revenues, but not for smaller companies and even most of non-white collar corporations. It also does not apply to markets with lower competency levels where the availability of “expert” workers can be much lower.  

His thesis that company training is almost completely useless, and that you should overpay and overpraise the best performers can be considered controversial and fairly dated, especially in times of rising dissatisfaction of the young people with their job and life prospects — examples being “Great Resignation” in the US and West in general, Tang Ping (“Lying flat”) in China. In general, while he describes the hiring process from the perspective of the company and its inner workings in great detail, he offers little advice on how to actually *attract* the best employees. Google may be getting millions of applications, but what about smaller firms?  

Another note on corporate training:  While we could agree that most corporate training programs do not provide the value that they could, structured education programs are necessary in markets or industries with lower competency levels, less exposure to global best practice, and potentially require re-skilling of large portions of the workforce.  

Finally, Bock’s acknowledgement, albeit relatively minor, of the existence of nepotism problems in Google and many other corporations and its negative impacts is, of course, laudable, but it almost feels like he should have gone farther and explained it in better detail.

From the visionary head of Google’s innovative People Operations comes a ground-breaking inquiry into the philosophy of work — and a blueprint for attracting the most spectacular talent to your business and ensuring that they succeed. 

 “We spend more time working than doing anything else in life. It’s not right that the experience of work should be so demotivating and dehumanizing.” So says Laszlo Bock, former head of People Operations at the company that transformed how the world interacts with knowledge. 

This insight is the heart of “Work Rules!”, a compelling and surprisingly playful manifesto that offers lessons including: 

• Take away managers’ power over employees 
• Learn from your best employees-and your worst 

• Hire only people who are smarter than you are, no matter how long it takes to find them 
• Pay unfairly (it’s more fair!) 
• Don’t trust your gut: Use data to predict and shape the future 
• Default to open-be transparent and welcome feedback 
• If you’re comfortable with the amount of freedom you’ve given your employees, you haven’t gone far enough. 

Drawing on the latest research in behavioural economics and a profound grasp of human psychology, “Work Rules!” also provides teaching examples from a range of industries-including lauded companies that happen to be hideous places to work and little-known companies that achieve spectacular results by valuing and listening to their employees. Bock takes us inside one of history’s most explosively successful businesses to reveal why Google is consistently rated one of the best places to work in the world, distilling 15 years of intensive worker R&D into principles that are easy to put into action, whether you’re a team of one or a team of thousands. 

“Work Rules!” shows how to strike a balance between creativity and structure, leading to success you can measure in quality of life as well as market share. Read it to build a better company from within rather than from above; read it to reawaken your joy in what you do. 

“Work Rules!” is primarily directed towards CEOs, managers, and corporate officers looking to work on and improve their firms’ corporate cultures and processes. It can also be recommended to a wider audience of people that are curious about Google, Silicon Valley, corporate culture, management, and business in general. 

If you are looking for more excellent books on corporate culture, “No Rules Rules!” (2020) by Reed Hastings also has quite an interesting take on corporate culture from inside of Netflix. Check out our review!