Google Hires Ph.D.'s; Times Surprised

Yesterday's New York Times ran a story by Randall Stross, marveling at the number of Ph.D.'s working at Google. Indeed, the story marveled about Google wanting to hire Ph.D.'s at all. Many other companies shun Ph.D.'s.

The article also hints at Google's success in integrating research with production. The usual model in the industry is to hire a small number of eggheads and send them off to some distant building to Think Deep Thoughts, so as not to disturb the mass of employees who make products. By contrast, Google generally uses the very same people to do research and create products. They do this by letting every employee spend 20% of their time doing anything they like that might be useful to the company. Doing this ensures that the research is done by people who understand the problems that come up in the company's day-to-day business.

Sustaining this model requires at least three things. First, you have to have employees who will use the unstructured research time productively; this is where the Ph.D.'s and other very smart people come in. Second, you need to maintain a work environment that is attractive to these people, because they'll have no trouble finding work elsewhere if they want to leave. Third, management has to have the discipline to avoid constantly canceling the 20% research time in order to meet the deadline du jour.

[Freedom to Tinker]

It amazes me that such a place exists in this universe. In addition to the three things that Edward Felton mentions, or perhaps overarching them is that management must be committed to the long term occasionally at the expense of this quarters "numbers".