I'm Feeling Lucky_ The Confessions of Google Employee Number 59 - Douglas Edwards [44]
I never strapped on skates and joined Google's Thursday parking-lot hockey game, but I wasn't immune to the competitive intensity driving the company. I found my outlet in the rowing machine shoehorned into a corner of the rec room that engineer Ray Sidney had cobbled together. I'd drop into the gym between meetings, sit on the sliding seat, strap my sandaled feet into the footrests, and breathe deeply. I'd reflect on the electronic cholesterol clogging my inbox, the uninvited additions to my work queue, or some viewpoint variance I'd had with a colleague. I'd grip the padded pull bar, close my eyes, and jerk with all my might, sending my stationary craft slicing outward to placid waters far from the source of my current distress.
It wasn't approved form, but I wasn't trying to win a regatta. My goal was to generate the maximum number of ergs in the minimum amount of time, to best the score posted on the "Google Rowing Club" whiteboard resting against the wall. Claiming the title "best" in any category at Google took on added significance given the capabilities of those with whom we worked.
At age forty-one, I had much to prove. Sometimes it took me a little while to parse a TLA everyone else seemed to know.* I voiced objections based on "irrelevant" experience gained over a twenty-year career. I drove a station wagon that smelled like baby wipes and spit-up. I didn't want the unripened grads with whom I shared the locker room to assume I was slowing down physically or mentally.
One afternoon the receptionist called me.
"Doug, can you come downstairs? Sergey asked if you could load his scuba gear in the car. He said you're the strongest guy here."
"Sure," I replied. Halfway to the lobby, I slowed down. Then I stopped. The founder of the company wanted me to do his scutwork. That couldn't be good, could it? But Sergey felt I was uniquely qualified. That was a plus, right? I was glad to be singled out, but embarrassed about the reason for it. Was I that in need of recognition?
Google's obsession with metrics was forcing me to take stock of my own capabilities. What did I bring to the table? What were my limits? How did I compare? Insecurity was a game all Googlers could play, especially about intellectual inferiority. Everyone but a handful felt they were bringing down the curve. I began to realize how closely self-doubt was linked to ambition and how adeptly Google leveraged the latter to inflate the former—urging us to pull ever harder to advance not just ourselves but the company as a whole.
Toward the end of my Google run, a newly hired senior manager put into words what I had discovered long before. "Let's face it, Doug," he confided, "Google hires really bright, insecure people and then applies sufficient pressure that no matter how hard they work, they're never able to consider themselves successful. Look at all the kids in my group who work absurd hours and still feel they're not keeping up with everyone else."
I had to agree that fear of inadequacy was a useful lever for prying the last erg of productivity out of dedicated employees. Everyone wanted to prove they belonged among the elite club of Google contributors. The manager who articulated that theory, though, considered himself too secure to play that game. Which may be why he lasted less than a year at Google.
Keeping It Clean
Google's embrace of "organized chaos" extended to our workspace, which might charitably have been called a mess, or less charitably, a pigsty.
The locker room had come with showers and saunas. The odor we added ourselves: a pungent mix of soiled jerseys, scuffed