Google Once Fired All Managers
And it didn’t work out
One fine day in July 2001, Larry Page, the then CEO of Google, decided to fire all the company’s project managers. As per Page technical people need not be supervised by someone who has lesser technical expertise. Even I was of a similar opinion as Page for quite some time in my professional career but then realized that there is a difference between idealism and practicality.
The incident
In July 2001, it had been 5 years of Google and Page was the CEO. As it happens with most of the startups, initially Google also didn’t have the management layer but as the number of employees grew, a layer of management was added in between. Page hated it.
As per Page:
- Google hired the most talented engineers and they were supposed to be self-motivated.
- These engineers do not need anyone to give them directions.
- They also need not be forced to adhere to deadlines.
- They should work only for the love of working.
Thus in July 2001, all engineers and their project managers were called outside Page’s office and the unexpected news was shared to them that all project managers are fired and all engineers would report to only one person named Wayne Rosing. Wayne Rosing was appointed as a VP of engineering and was a highly technical person so Page was satisfied with this move. But it did not go well with the then HR head Stacey Sullivan and created friction between them.
This experiment did not last long. Though in the new setup some engineers performed well, many others craved feedback. Doing appraisal was another problem as no one person was keeping track of how the employee performed. Thus the model failed and managers were again recruited to Google.
What can we learn from this incident?
“There is a difference between idealism and practicality”
Ideally one has the expectation that every employee is self-motivated. One does the work without looking for praise from others. Their motivation for doing work is ideal such as “I work to have an outlet to my creative expression” or “I work so that it brings more order to the world”.
But such expectation from all employees is unrealistic.
Practically following behaviors are observed from the majority of employees if not all:
- Craving for feedback: When a person completes a work, he expects some praise for it. It’s a human thing. Managers do provide this feedback thus lifting the morale of the employee.
- Resolve friction among the team members: Practically it is difficult to have a team where all members are in perfect harmony. There is invariably friction between some members of the team and there needs to be someone who would resolve these issues otherwise employees get extremely frustrated and spend their vital energy in handling this friction in their own ways.
- Appraisal and career growth: There needs to be one person who is dedicated to understanding the employee’s needs with respect to his career growth. An appraisal is also easily done in such a situation.
- Only looking for creative work: In the absence of managers, everyone would like to do work which is creative thus leaving behind all the mundane tasks. But practically, such mundane tasks are also required for the successful completion of the project. So there needs to be a balance between creative work and mundane work and this is normally handled by a manager.
Conclusion
The majority of people in the world are not self-motivated. They do work to get praise or a good appraisal, etc. In such a situation it would be inappropriate to put in a system which is based on the sole expectation that everyone in that company is ideal. Managers provide a human touch to the employee’s expectations and it is extremely difficult to get rid of them especially in a large setup.
P.S. Read more such articles by the author by accessing them through his profile page on Medium. Links to some of the articles are given below:
1> Zoom Video Meets Cause Rise in Plastic Surgery
2> Creativity Need Not Entirely be Dependent Upon Birth
3> Follow Righteous Path But Without Fear as the Motivating Force
