I'm Feeling Lucky_ The Confessions of Google Employee Number 59 - Douglas Edwards [73]
Urs acknowledged to me that his attitude created problems. "I'm not really proud of that," he said, "because we had really excellent people. It's easy to forget, because there are problems everywhere, and obviously you focus on problems, because that's what needs to be fixed, right? But that can come across as 'everything's bad,' right? When in fact things are great." And then, because, after all, he was Urs, he added, "Except there still are problems."
The tone set by Urs in engineering was the tone for all of Google. The company stacked its payroll with high achievers unaccustomed to going unacknowledged, and despite the stock options and the free food, they often felt underappreciated. At the same time, many felt unsure of their own contributions or where they stood in relation to their peers.
For my own ego nourishment, I deciphered different types of feedback I received and developed an interpretative scale of success. Ordered from "Can I double-check your SAT scores?" to "I don't think that would have occurred to me," it went like this:
It's a waste of time.
It's not worth talking about.
It doesn't offend me.
It will do until we can fix it.
It seems reasonable.
It seems sensible.
It's kind of interesting.
I also developed a personal theory about why encouragement to improve productivity came easily but effusive praise proved elusive. It wasn't that people didn't expect and appreciate exceptional performance, or that coworkers and managers were too envious to note a job well done. Just the opposite. If you assumed all your colleagues were at Google because of their skill and intelligence, calling attention to their success might be insulting—as if you were surprised that they had done what was expected.
I took some comfort from that notion, specious though it may have been, because I didn't want to dwell on the alternative possibility—that I was hearing so little praise because no one thought I actually deserved it.
What? Me Worry?
The fear of falling behind churned my stomach and tattered my sleep. Not so for Urs. Despite the massive load Larry and Sergey had placed on his shoulders, at the end of a full day he could let things be. "I've always had the ability to accept that there's stuff that I can't deal with right now," he said. "And I don't feel bad about it because I know I made the best use of my time. People are going to laugh when they hear this, but it's actually easier for me to accept failure or imperfection than for other people—if it's there for a good reason."
I always questioned my allocation of time and how I set priorities. Looking over my shoulder, Cindy did too. A bike-to-work-day flyer got the same attention as a vital piece of a product launch. Once I latched onto a project, I forced myself to stay with it until every preposition was assigned an object and every participle properly tucked in. I sometimes struggled with a single word choice for an hour and then spent days defending it. Intense focus. Willful execution. Methodical progress. Long periods lost wandering in the trees.
Urs would take a step back, squint to obscure the details, and take in the larger picture. He understood the minutiae, but he was self-disciplined enough not to obsess on them, which freed him to paint in large sweeping strokes. As he put it, "You have to say both emotionally and intellectually, 'I can only work so many hours. The best I can do is make good use of these hours and prioritize the right way so I spend my time on the things that are most important.' Then if I see something below the line that is broken and I can fix it, it's important not to try to fix it. Because you're going to hurt yourself. Either personally—because you add another hour and that's not sustainable—or you're going