Name: Julien Sobczak's review of Work Rules! by Laszlo Bock
Item: Work Rules!
Rating: 4
Author: Julien Sobczak

Laszlo Bock

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLERWALL STREET JOURNAL BESTSELLER From the visionary head of Google's innovative People Operations comes a groundbreaking inquiry into the philosophy of work-and a blueprint for attracting the most spectacular talent to your business and ensuring that they succeed. "We spend more time working than doing anything else in life. It's not right that the experience of work should be so demotivating and dehumanizing." So says Laszlo Bock, head of People Operations at the company that transformed how the world interacts with knowledge. This insight is the heart of WORK RULES!, a compelling and surprisingly playful manifesto that offers lessons including: Take away managers' power over employees Learn from your best employees-and your worst Hire only people who are smarter than you are, no matter how long it takes to find them Pay unfairly (it's more fair!) Don't trust your gut: Use data to predict and shape the future Default to open-be transparent and welcome feedback If you're comfortable with the amount of freedom you've given your employees, you haven't gone far enough. Drawing on the latest research in behavioral economics and a profound grasp of human psychology, WORK RULES! also provides teaching examples from a range of industries-including lauded companies that happen to be hideous places to work and little-known companies that achieve spectacular results by valuing and listening to their employees. Bock takes us inside one of history's most explosively successful businesses to reveal why Google is consistently rated one of the best places to work in the world, distilling 15 years of intensive worker R&D into principles that are easy to put into action, whether you're a team of one or a team of thousands. WORK RULES! shows how to strike a balance between creativity and structure, leading to success you can measure in quality of life as well as market share. Read it to build a better company from within rather than from above; read it to reawaken your joy in what you do.

Insights from Inside Google That Will Transform How You Live and Lead

Work Rules!

Katherine Handy

Julien Sobczak

HR reinvented through experimentations

This book was published shortly after the book How Google Works. Both books talk a lot about Google's culture, but through different perspectives. Work Rules focuses on the HR department, called People Operations at Google, a team led by the author for 10 years.

I found How Google Works more insightful and Work Rules more practical. The first is about how a company succeeded using an innovative management approach while the second is about why this approach works and how to make it a reality for you too.

I took more pleasure reading How Google Works but it may be because I read it first and there are (logically) many overlapping ideas between the two books. If you are interested in challenging your management practices, both books will be useful but if you must read one, go with Work Rules. The book is longer, and provides more context, more references, more arguments that could be useful to persuade others that change must happen for you too.

The author challenges received ideas. He demonstrates that what he did at Google can be done elsewhere too. Many ideas cost nothing, except the courage to experiment, and the perseverance to succeed. I don't think it's easy but your people deserve it.

A New York Times and Wall Street Journal Bestseller Daily Telegraph, Huffington Post & Business Insider Top Business Book to Read 'Every year, 2 million people apply for a job at Google - so what's the secret?' Guardian A compelling manifesto with the potential to change how we work and live, Work Rules! offers both a philosophy of the new world of work and a blueprint for attracting the most spectacular talent and ensuring the brightest and best prosper. The way we work is changing - are you?

Rebeca Keren Nuñez

Sumamente interesante. Un imprescindible para los interesados en la gestión humana. Lo recomiendo ampliamente. Es largo, pero no tiene desperdicio. También lo recomiendo para quienes gestionan equipos y tienen personal a cargo.

The one that got me excited about starting a career in People

Evan Gusev

KADY BURNS

Nikolay Bachiyski

A must-read if you’re trying to build a sustainable value-driven creative organization.

The main take-away for me weren’t any of the specific practices, because many of them will not work in my organization or even in an organization at a different scale from Google’s (around 50,000 employees).

What I will remember from the book is the importance of building a solid employee happiness-driven and data-informed people operations team.

Daryl Houston

One of four business books I remember ever reading in my life (3 of them in the last 4 months, all of them in the last 2 years or so). It's a pretty engaging book, though it doesn't solve all the problems of leading great teams at work or anything, but there's some stuff I'll go back to. I dog-eared maybe 30 pages for later review. It's neat to get an inside peek at some of the ways Google has succeeded and failed, and the content seems to be offered sincerely with a desire to help -- it's not just marketing for Google (though it is undoubtedly also marketing for Google). I like that there's emphasis on data and that there are a few short case studies, though I think it'd be hard if not impossible in most companies to reproduce the sorts of things Google can do with data and personnel experimentation. It's the most pleasant, enjoyable, polished of this sort of book that I've read, and I'm glad I read it. Three stars because, ugh, business book, but a pretty palatable one.

Tyler Jefford

This is an incredible book for anyone both leading a company, or wanting to know how good companies are ran. Laszlo goes into the people operations of Google, how salaries are calculated, how benefits are shared and how creating a happy work place is the best way to have a better company.

Jan Miczaika

Niels Andersen

Taylor Murphy

Jon Eckert

Jeff Borton

Jeffrey Mack

Gabriel Ayuso

Gloria Baeuerlein

Todd Prauner

Ben Roberts

Chelsea Kang

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLERWALL STREET JOURNAL BESTSELLER The Globe and Mail Top Leadership and Management BookForbes Top Creative Leadership Book From the visionary head of Google's innovative People Operations comes a groundbreaking inquiry into the philosophy of work-and a blueprint for attracting the most spectacular talent to your business and ensuring that they succeed. "We spend more time working than doing anything else in life. It's not right that the experience of work should be so demotivating and dehumanizing." So says Laszlo Bock, former head of People Operations at the company that transformed how the world interacts with knowledge. This insight is the heart of WORK RULES!, a compelling and surprisingly playful manifesto that offers lessons including: Take away managers' power over employees Learn from your best employees-and your worst Hire only people who are smarter than you are, no matter how long it takes to find them Pay unfairly (it's more fair!) Don't trust your gut: Use data to predict and shape the future Default to open-be transparent and welcome feedback If you're comfortable with the amount of freedom you've given your employees, you haven't gone far enough. Drawing on the latest research in behavioral economics and a profound grasp of human psychology, WORK RULES! also provides teaching examples from a range of industries-including lauded companies that happen to be hideous places to work and little-known companies that achieve spectacular results by valuing and listening to their employees. Bock takes us inside one of history's most explosively successful businesses to reveal why Google is consistently rated one of the best places to work in the world, distilling 15 years of intensive worker R&D into principles that are easy to put into action, whether you're a team of one or a team of thousands. WORK RULES! shows how to strike a balance between creativity and structure, leading to success you can measure in quality of life as well as market share. Read it to build a better company from within rather than from above; read it to reawaken your joy in what you do.

Caash

Eva Decker

landon brand

Amelia Lin

Google receives over 1,500,000 unique applications for jobs every year. This book shows you why. * How to learn from your best employees - and your worst * Why you should only hire people who are smarter than you are * Take away managers' powers over employees * And why not to trust your gut instinct 'We spend more time working than doing anything else in life. It's not right that the experience should be so demotivating and dehumanizing.' So says Laszlo Bock, visionary head of People Operations at the company that transformed how the world interacts with knowledge: this insight is the heart of his brilliant first book. A compelling manifesto with the potential to change how we work and live, Work Rules! offers both a new philosophy of the new world of work and a blueprint for attracting the most spectacular talent and ensuring the brightest and best prosper. Your workplace and how you treat your employees has a huge effect on your success. In twelve vivid chapters, Bock lays out a series of surprising lessons from a range of industries - from household names to little-known innovators. He also takes us inside one of history's most explosively successful businesses to reveal why Google is consistently rated one of the best places to work in the world. His years of experience are distilled into a series of entertaining principles that are easy to put into action, whether you're a team of one or a team of thousands. Work Rules! shows how to strike a balance between creativity and structure, leading to success you can measure in quality of life as well as market share. Read it to build a better company from within rather than from above; read it to reawaken your joy in what you do. The way we work is changing - are you?

Katherine Handy &
Work Rules! by Laszlo Bock

Reviews

Join the club

Katherine Handy &Work Rules! by Laszlo Bock

Reviews

Join the club

Katherine Handy &
Work Rules! by Laszlo Bock