Google: Limits of the Googley Technical Management Model
September 19, 2008
You can read the statement by the former Digital Equipment wizard and now Google senior vice president of engineering and research Alan Eustace here. The article “Changes in Phoenix” announces the closing of the Google office in Phoenix. The office opened several years ago, and you can refresh your memory about the promise of this new engineering facility here. The statement is clear and gentle. For me the most important statement in the article was:
But we’ve found that despite everyone’s best efforts, the projects our engineers have been working on in Arizona have been, and remain, highly fragmented. So after a lot of soul searching we have decided to incorporate work on these projects into teams elsewhere at Google. We will therefore be closing our Arizona office on November 21, 2008.
My take on this is that Phoenix may be an anomaly. Maybe it was the weather? Maybe it was water or lack of it? With this office closing, I asked myself, “Has the Googley management method reached its sustainable limit?” With one office closing, I just have a question. I need more data. A single instance. Nothing more. But what if…
Stephen Arnold, September 19, 2008
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