>"This is a distinguishing trait of every great manager that I've worked with."
If it's genuine, or at least convincing, I would agree.
I've witnessed a few attempts at this which clearly didn't meet that criteria and it was nearly the most off-putting managerial song and dance I've ever witnessed.
I get the impression there's a certain group of people who read lists like these online or in a book somewhere and go about mimicking them without understanding the underlying prerequisites.
Eating the failure and giving the success necessarily requires a total understanding of the actual successes and failures.
Without that, the selfless routine is doing everyone a disservice by hiding the actual problems and quashing further discussion that might reveal them.
> I get the impression there's a certain group of people who read lists like these online or in a book somewhere and go about mimicking them without understanding the underlying prerequisites.
As a somewhat of an aside, I notice this disturbing tendency a lot in rookie salespeople. One of the bits of sales advice everyone appears to have read in some list somewhere is something about mirroring and first names.
It would creep me out (and trip the "douchebag alert!" signal) every time I spoke to a salesperson who would poorly imitate my mannerisms and keep jamming in my first name between their words.
It's not always so simple. Taking blame of others' mistakes can come across like regret for hiring or trusting that person. Sometimes part of giving people responsibility is letting them deal with the mistakes they make.
Within the team, I think that is entirely appropriate. People thrive on, and should be given responsibility. Individuals should be rewarded or disciplined appropriately. That is part of the manager's job.
Outside of the team, ultimately the manager is responsible for delivering. That is their job, and with a good manager, the buck stops at them - without exception. If they don't deliver, it is their failure - even if that failure is a result of their reports failing to deliver, or unrealistic requirements from their superiors. Perhaps the appropriate internal action for that failure is to discipline their reports, but ultimately they are the captain of their ship, and should be the first one on and the last one off.
In this framework, you don't take the blame for others' mistakes. You take the blame for your team's mistakes, and take responsibility for fixing them. You explicitly do not place blame on the person who actually made the mistake, nor do you imply that you should not have hired or trusted them.
Obviously, all this assumes that it actually was a valid mistake. In the rare case where the failure was caused by gross negligence or intentional misconduct, then you should take responsibility for hiring and trusting them, and then you should fire them.
> Larry suggested we go way beyond this. His idea was to ‘just OCR’ the entire computer screen continuously so that you could easily search and find anything you had ever seen on your computer.
This guy founded Google? I wish I could have seen the horrified look on the engineers' faces when they heard this idea.
I think this goes to show that the secret to having better ideas is to have more ideas, and nobody cares about the million that suck, they care about the one that makes you a million.
but you cannot work on a million ideas - you have to pick the few that are actually good. Having a million ideas clearly makes it more likely you have the Big One, but I am interested in the mental process in picking and in committing.
or has Mr Page done a ridiculous amount of crazy that will never work things?
He's done his share of crazy will-never-work things too.
I think a lot of the reason it works out is the existence of an external feedback loop, a group of people that are willing to say "Larry, you're insane." Larry is actually pretty good at listening to other people - even now, in the New Google that sometimes does very unpopular things, he's committed to at least hearing out objections and weighing them. When Eric was CEO he also provided a very useful countervailing force to Larry & Sergey's more idiotic ideas, while still letting crazy ones like "Let's build a webmail client!" or "Let's build a browser!" or "Let's buy a mobile phone OS!" go through.
most of us have explicit or implicit backlogs. I think there is however something about just starting a project that tells you if it is feasible, problematic or interesting that somehow looking at a list does not.
Would be interested in how Page chooses the ones he will invest personal energy into
It's not that crazy of an idea. He's not talking about holding up a scanner to your screen, scanning it, then OCR'ing a big tiff. He's probably talking about something that takes screen shots every few seconds, OCR's that, then indexes the contents based on what's on your screen, your current URLs, etc.
"Computer, search for every time I saw the words 'crazy idea' in the past six months and include how my workspace looked at each occurrence."
What about the surely obvious privacy implications? A lot of people on HN are barely trusting Google with their mail, or even their searches - would you trust them with seeing everything on your screen?
Google's successful offerings in search, email, docs, desktop search, Android, and Chromebook suggest that the privacy worries of "a lot of people on HN" aren't very relevant to their bottom-line.
Also, the functionality – complete screen archiving and indexing – could be implemented locally. So, its value can be evaluated separately from the question of whether you'd want the screengrabs/indexes living at Google.
What about the surely obvious privacy implications
What about them?
would you trust them with seeing everything on your screen?
Hell yeah, in an instant, if it meant I had a way of searching everything I'd seen! I'd want a way to turn it off at times ("Incognito mode"), but to me the benefits would be huge.
The one problem with it is that it isn't ambitious enough - it only is helpful with remembering stuff you saw on your computer screen.
If only there was a way to OCR everything you saw, index it all and allow you to search for it again in the future.
Imagine if I could wear some glasses or something, and then they had an app that could do OCR or everything I saw! That would accomplish the "OCR the screen" thing, but expand the scope to things off the computer screen too!
> This is also the logic behind ‘Eating Your Own Dogfood’ as Google has monikered it.
facepalm
How has tech media gotten so myopic to any history or context outside it? Hell, even within tech Microsoft and Oracle have used that phrase for decades before google was a big deal.
This is a very small niggle, but I've noticed at least one other website that invites me to tweet select quotes from the article. I find this invitation obnoxious and smug. It suggests (incorrectly, I'm sure) that the author is a little too pleased with their own profundity.
True hackers should celebrate every instance of that word being associated with anything positive, non-black hat. Typing hackers, growth hackers, PM hackers? Great, bring it on. Finally, people starting to use the word "hacker" in a way that's true to its real meaning.
These are some great points and I would say they apply to general management as much as they do to technology and product management. Sounds like a great person to work with - trust, empathy, and transparency tend to make everything smoother and more productive.
this sounds like the epitome of a balanced hard working manager / team leader. It's just that it is a lot of work - and so much of it is based around keeping everyone onside, talking and not taking their ball home with them.
but am I getting too old ? I prefer people learning to take no for an answer and still knuckling down to work, knowing there will be a yes around the corner. this gets more often and so easier the faster you go.
tiptoeing round Larry Page is clearly good for your career and future prospects, but few of us will work in an office with such personal power differentials. most bosses of us are the same peons as we are - so honesty should have little opportunity cost.
This article is really good and it gives a lot of information about how Todd Jackson is a good PM. A lot of what is written can be used in one's own daily experience as a PM and startup owner.
Looking forward to using some of the points mentioned to work. :)
Don't know why but I read "be a shit umbrella..." as "don't be a good umbrella" and really had to do a double take on that sentence before I realised what he actually meant.
This is a distinguishing trait of every great manager that I've worked with.