HBR's 10 Must Reads Big Business Ideas Collection (2015-2017 plus The Essentials) (4 Books) (HBR's 10 Must Reads)

How Google Sold Its Engineers on Management

by David A. Garvin

SINCE THE EARLY DAYS OF GOOGLE, people throughout the company have questioned the value of managers. That skepticism stems from a highly technocratic culture. As one software engineer, Eric Flatt, puts it, “We are a company built by engineers for engineers.” And most engineers, not just those at Google, want to spend their time designing and debugging, not communicating with bosses or supervising other workers’ progress. In their hearts they’ve long believed that management is more destructive than beneficial, a distraction from “real work” and tangible, goal-directed tasks.

A few years into the company’s life, founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin actually wondered whether Google needed ...