Book Review Saturdays: In The Plex

There are books that attempt to show you how to be successful, then there are books that tell a story about how some other folks became successful. Oddly, you can have better luck learning from the second kind of book, as long as you're able to filter the narrative out and get to the detail.

You see, people buy narrative, whether it's fiction or non-fiction, it doesn't matter. They want a story, a protagonist, obstacles to overcome and resolution at the end. Real life is never, ever like that. (Which is probably one of the reasons narratives are build into our DNA; they give the absurdity of existence a framework of meaning we can easily grasp)

"In The Plex" is the story of how and why Google is as successful as it is. Written by award-winning famous author Steven Levy (who also wrote "Hackers" and "Crypto" ), it's a book that obviously benefits from lots of behind-the-scenese access to Google's organization, founders, and ehtos.

The problem is that we're all heroes in our own story. Most of use don't spend a lot of time talking about the bad things we might do, no matter what they are. It's obvious this was a one-sided research effort. Adding to the mix is the fact that most massively-scaling startups have to create an almost cult-like atmosphere or they'll fling themselves apart. So Levy had his work cut out for him.

I said the stories-of-success books were better, and that's true, but it's still up to the reader to glean the wheat from the chaff. Fortunately Levly is clueless enough not to put too fine of a point of any flaws. I got probably a dozen little interesting bits while Levy was going on about other things. A recurring theme over and over again is Google hiring or consulting with professionals who tell them they have to do things a certain way. "But why?" was their response, and usually they managed to do much better by ignoring the advice. (Most of what passes for management/consulting/best-practices is just a more elaborate version of tribal ritual)

I learned how they deal with the idea of project managers, an anathema to guys who wore street clothes to work everyday. I learned how scaling affected communication strategies on the inside. My best guess is that Google today is probably a very boring company to work for, hence all the acqui-hires and app-of-the-week nonsense they're constantly doing.

There's a lot of good information here, but you catch it in passing. This would make for a great audio book to have on while you're doing other things. Fun book.