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Case Analysis System Infrastructure at G
Case Analysis System Infrastructure at G
Contents
Introduction......................................................................................................................................3
Situation Part...................................................................................................................................4
HR management challenges.........................................................................................................6
SWOT analysis............................................................................................................................7
The main issue of Google................................................................................................................8
Article presentation........................................................................................................................16
Questions.......................................................................................................................................17
Conclusion.....................................................................................................................................20
Works Cited...................................................................................................................................22
CASE ANALYSIS “SYSTEM INFRASTRUCTURE AT GOOGLE” 3
Introduction
The article “System Infrastructure at Google” by Linda Hill and Emily Stecker gives a
quite deep understanding of the way Google managed its system infrastructure. However, it is
also of a great value if we examine it from different perspectives. Many issues that were
highlighted by the authors deal with the culture of the company, as well as the management style
of its executives, talent acquisition and retention, etc. Nowadays, many companies struggle to
find the best way to manage their employees, and that makes the case about system infrastructure
at Google extremely helpful in providing some very useful hints. It explains what makes Google
so successful in managing the best talents in the World. Organizational behavior issues are
explained in details so that the reader can easily follow the cause-and-effect relationship between
the decisions of the executives at Google and the success of a project and of the company in
general. Another important aspect underlined by the authors is human resource management
The article provides some real-life examples how the company succeeded in managing
extremely huge number of talented and educated professionals while keeping its structure flat.
Moreover, Google managed to keep its original culture of empowering its employees, allowing
them do whatever they are best at, and not turning it into chaos. Even though the article is about
Google’s system infrastructure, the main issues discussed are related to the company’s growth
and its effect on its culture and structure, management style, leadership challenges and increasing
level of complexity of the tasks. As Google grew it faced many challenges, however, a unique
approach and the structure implemented helped to avoid many problems and laid the foundation
Situation Part
Google was founded on the 4th of September, 1998 by Larry Page and Sergey Brin. From
a garage-based company at the beginning, Google grew into the biggest and most innovative
company in the world. At the moment, Google has around 53, 600 full-time employees
worldwide. Its mission statement is: “to organize the world’s information and make it universally
accessible and useful”[ CITATION Abo15 \l 1033 ]. Initially, Google (previously BackRub) was
designed to evaluate each individual page based on its importance[ CITATION Our15 \l 1033 ]. In
2001, Google became ninth largest web site in the USA. It had around 25 million unique visitors
per month. Operating profit of the company in 2003 made up around $345 million. Major
revenues came from paid listings, moreover, the number of visitors outside the USA also
skyrocketed. In 2004 the company introduced email service Gmail, that provided one gigabyte of
storage space, much more than of the rival email services[ CITATION Hil10 \l 1033 ]. The increasing
number of applications led to the growth of the company in general and required extremely
experienced employees, and a way to manage them that maximizes productivity of the company.
Even though it went global, Google used bottom-up way of managing their employees, giving
them freedom to innovate and keeping the structure of the company very flat. In August 2004
Google went public and issued stock. Almost at the same time new web services as Google Maps
and Google Earth were launched[ CITATION Our15 \l 1033 ]. Increasing number of new services
such as Maps, Chrome and Earth was accompanied by the development of Android operation
system and creating huge number of innovative technologies as Google Glass. The company
became enormously big and currently is going through restructuring under the new parent
company called Alphabet. The CEO of the company became Sundar Pichai, previously VP of
product at Google. The restructuring process leads to better financial transparency (especially for
CASE ANALYSIS “SYSTEM INFRASTRUCTURE AT GOOGLE” 5
the Wall Street, by providing more financial information). In addition to that, research projects
will get their own executive, which leads to closer attention to research projects[ CITATION
Gau15 \l 1033 ].
The human resource management approaches of the company are easy to understand, but
difficult to execute. There are quite a number of important points worth mentioning. First of all,
Google is an extremely huge Company, but its structure is flat. Even though, Google tries to
maintain the size of the groups small, it has a small number of middle managers. As it is noted:
“We (Google) try to have as little middle management as possible”[CITATION Hil10 \p 3 \l 1033 ].
The company was driven “from the bottom”. Its management used “bottom-up approach” of
bringing new ideas to life and introducing innovative ideas. The engineers are given as much
freedom as possible. They are given an opportunity to focus on “what they are best at –
engineering, not management”[CITATION Hil10 \p 5 \l 1033 ]. However, the idea that Google does
not want to hire additional managers just strengthens the fact, that ideas at the company are
Another point is that managers have to manage not only a portfolio of projects, but a
portfolio of people[ CITATION Hil10 \l 1033 ]. The problem appeared with the hierarchy of the
company – since it (the hierarchy) was not emphasized, the managers had to earn respect from
the engineers, which was possible only in case, when the managers had knowledge in both
management and technical fields. Such employees are quite hard to obtain. Google struggled in
finding such employees as well as in promoting engineers into managerial roles (since they
mostly wanted to do what they really love - engineering)[ CITATION Hil10 \l 1033 ].
Another issue related to management is related to the growth of the company. Since it
grew all over the globe, it became harder for managers to “know what was going on in the
CASE ANALYSIS “SYSTEM INFRASTRUCTURE AT GOOGLE” 6
company”[CITATION Hil10 \p 12 \l 1033 ]. That increased the number of meetings (reviews) within
the company to guide the management towards specific goals of the company in general. At the
reviews it was a common thing to see which teams were stuck and struggled to understand what
Despite all the challenges Google faced it had two advantages – almost unlimited
resources and wise management of its executives. The issue with promoting engineers into
managerial positions was addressed to engineers as “it is time to become a manager when the
Google always tried to get the best employees and give them as much freedom as
possible so that they can focus of what they are best at. Moreover, Google believes that engineers
“want to program, they don’t’ want to do their laundry”[CITATION Hil10 \p 2 \l 1033 ]. Such an
approach leads to top performance and concentration on the direct task. That is partially why
Google’s employees are ten times more productive than the rest, working in similar companies.
well as on the way to maximize their performance for the sake of the success of the company in
general. The issues that sometimes appear are just the opportunity for the company become more
HR management challenges
The company faces a few challenges and most of them are related to internal causes.
First, managers find it difficult to get respect from engineers. A manager has to have technical
knowledge to get respect from an engineering team. Here rises another challenge, though
external – Google struggles to find an employee with both technical and managerial knowledge.
CASE ANALYSIS “SYSTEM INFRASTRUCTURE AT GOOGLE” 7
The reason might be that engineers want to do what they like – engineering, not managerial
tasks. Going back to internal issues, another one is related to the size of the company. The
problem is that huge size of the company prevents its management from seeing clear direction in
which the company is moving. It is difficult for them to manage their employees when they have
limited information about the course of the company. Google’s management has to hold regular
meetings, where the managers can get an idea of what is going inside the company.
SWOT analysis
SWOT analysis of the company from the organizational behavior and human resource
perspectives shows that Google is doing really well. Despite some challenges, the company
managed to gain a competitive advantage – their employees a way more productive than those of
Strengths:
Bottom-up approach and flat structure (ideas come from engineers, not from the
managers, since engineers have better knowledge in programming, plus small middle
management layer)
Freedom to innovate
Weaknesses:
engineers)
Communication issues (since the company grew globally, managers often did not
know about what was really happening at the company and could not communicate that
Opportunities:
Access to the global talent pool of extremely skilled workforce (going global
opens the door for the most skilled people in the World)
Increasing demand for brand new and cutting edge solutions may increase the
Threats:
Inability of the market to use products of Google (too early to the market)
Economic downturns may slow down the pace of innovation in the industry
overall.
In short period of time Google experienced an immediate and steady growth (see Graph
1). Company rapidly developed from a small startup to one of the biggest companies in the
world. The main issue was to manage the steady growth, not only in technology development but
also in human recourses. As from several employees, the number of new hires raised
CASE ANALYSIS “SYSTEM INFRASTRUCTURE AT GOOGLE” 9
dramatically. Bill Coughrann - key player of Google system infrastructure management - was
hired in early 2003. Number of employees has raised from 2000 to 16,805 from early 2004 to
late 2007 under his management. It is worth mentioning that: “Coughran’s ability to effectively
lead the infrastructure group was critical to Google’s success”[ CITATION Hil10 \l 1033 ].
The more Google grew, the more people needed to work on particular projects. As highly
innovative company sometimes it had to solve the same problem in various ways. There was a
possibility of multiple teams working on the same matter but exploring different ways of its
development. Allowing several teams to work on their own ideas for the same matter-
brought up the perennial question of innovation versus efficiency[ CITATION Hil10 \l 1033 ].
CASE ANALYSIS “SYSTEM INFRASTRUCTURE AT GOOGLE” 10
Each moment Google technical challenges were becoming more complex, that created
new demands on the company’s infrastructure. Scaling the human recourses was a huge
challenge. As Google politics was only to hire the best specialists out there, company confronted
another issue – it was really hard to find the best fits for the job. Google designed and developed
a new people hiring system that allowed innovating with speed: a new hire had to speak with at
least six people ranging from manager to his potential colleague in the area he is going to work
Many new employees were hired. It was more and more difficult to keep companies
structure flat. Some additional managers had to be added, however teams remained small. Small
teams where designed on purpose, as they were more productive and allowed to eliminate as
much middle management as possible. Every project team had a technical lead (TL) – chief
engineer - during a project. However, person had this role only during the particular project. The
title moved across the group when projects changed. This was due to the people management
awareness that engineers wants to engineer, though Chief engineer had to do a lot of not
engineering work, help to get decisions in case of disagreements, manage all technical aspects,
Due to the Google worldwide growth – cultural environment have changed: from family-
like very close approach it scaled to the amount that is impossible for employees to know each
other. This caused difficulties for managers to understand what was going on in the whole
company and it was a challenging task for them to connect the employees and serve as
‘organizational glue’. Moreover, engineers hired were from different backgrounds, had different
experience, varied in age and nationalities – all those differences were not an easy subject to
To manage the dynamics within and in the teams was a great deal. Managers that would
be respected technically and be influential enough to direct engineers to achieve the relevant
goals, though could avoid micromanagement were required. As Google did not emphasize
hierarchy - managers not necessarily could get the direct respect from engineers. If managers
were less technical – engineers would usually undermine their decisions even though they had a
formal authority. To solve this issue, management (Coughran) was looking for highly technically
skilled engineers that could not only design Google’s most important systems, but also manage
the elite engineers or assist teams that required guidance[ CITATION Hil10 \l 1033 ].
Even though Google was expanding, management (Coughran) wanted to maintain the
bottom-up approach in the company. It means that engineers are encouraged to develop and
explore their ideas. The idea list software (employee post an idea, others - vote, the best idea
percolates to the top) was a right tool that allowed the good ideas of employees go up to the top
and be recognized.
Google realized that there must be an ideal work environment offered to achieve the best
employee performance. Company understood that satisfied employees will benefit company the
most, so it created an employee-friendly internal company culture. Free food was served in a
lunchroom, Friday meetings were held as more like get-togethers at summer camps and so on
(though, it was a challenge to keep it this way as the company was expanding). Furthermore,
management believed that the employee have to do what he does the best to achieve the highest
possible performance. For instance – programmers have to program and engineers have to focus
on engineering because they are driven by this job. Even though employees loved their job -
promotions and bonuses were offered for a quality work[ CITATION Hil10 \l 1033 ].
CASE ANALYSIS “SYSTEM INFRASTRUCTURE AT GOOGLE” 12
Different viewpoints were extremely welcome and company encouraged the employees
to think to the future and more broadly. All decisions were made according to data-based
arguments and facts – no politics or emotional influence affected the decisions so they could be
Management style
Google discharged structure and control as well as reduced bureaucracy to a minimal level. This
kind of system was very flexible and liquid, however, appeared to work. Loose management
allowed engineers shift the groups across the company. As the number of engineers was
increasing quickly – management (Coughran) not always new an exact number of engineers in
the group. Fortunately, Coughran collected the engineering teams that needed not someone’s
vision to follow but a context that allowed them to do their best work. So, if an engineer moved
to another group – he most likely saw an opportunity to contribute to the work he seemed he had
Another good example of innovative management in Google was - making people feel
ownership of their job. Team’s problem was everybody’s problem. That encouraged the person
to “go and fix it”[ CITATION Hil10 \l 1033 ]. However, it was challenging to make people feel
Google is a good example of how to handle the scaling of human recources while the
during the extreme growth is tremendous. Company have used a lot of innovative ways of
where not standard. For instance, company encouraged its employees to experiment and think
Google tried to keep companys structure as flat as possible and avoided a lot of
managerial layers. This also helped to reduce bureuocracy and innovate faster. Company
implemented a gentle approach towards employees while dictatorship or hierarchy was more
common at the time. Delibarately loose comapnys management was used and appeared to work.
Unlikely a lot of other companies where the hierarchy principle was used, Google
supported bottom- up culture where the main principle is „a lot knows better than a
few“[ CITATION Hil10 \l 1033 ]. Company created more then comfortable work environment and
New hiring system was developed at Google. It aimed to hire only the best and most
creative employees in any field. As a fact, the best employees were the most innovative ones and
However, huge comapny size, different cultural and experience background of the
employees caused difficulties in managing the employees. It was also noted that in the company
of this size it is hard to get recognition of the contribution to specific project for an employee. On
the other hand, Google as a company of this size had a lot to offer and there are more
Google is a good example of how to handle the scaling of human recources while the
To analyze Google's case and to get a better idea what are the most important aspects of
human resources management in this company, we will use motivational theories (Maslow's
Theory Y).
better, this company is attracting A-type personalities, best people in their professions from
around the world. Moreover, to keep these people at Google the management of the company has
to take on specific actions and innovate human resource management so that it matches
According to Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs, the main needs of any human are:
Google's motivational system covers all of these needs. By high salaries and reward systems
Google is fully covering physical, safety and social needs. Additionally company provides
various perks on offices, free food, entertainment and similar commodities that allows company's
employees to focus on their work. Since Google's major focus is to cover higher needs such as
self-esteem and self-actualization, the company attracts smartest people around the world and
allows them to choose projects they are interested in and to create new things that change the
world.
these are outlined as Theory X and Theory Y. Managers of Theory X believe that employees are
CASE ANALYSIS “SYSTEM INFRASTRUCTURE AT GOOGLE” 15
lazy, without ambitions and do not enjoy working. Because of that strict control mechanism
implementation is needed. "In contrast, Theory Y paints a much more positive view of
employees’ attitudes and behaviors."[ CITATION McG \l 1033 ]. Managers of Theory Y believe that
employees are able to enjoy their work, are pro-active and want to contribute to the goals of
organization. Managers of Theory Y gives their employees autonomy to do their best work. They
tend to create more of a supportive role, maintaining working environment where employees are
allowed to take their own decisions, stay creative and innovative[ CITATION McG \l 1033 ].
employees by aligning their goals with leader's goals. So, employees are focused on
organizations wellbeing rather than focusing on what is best for individual employees[ CITATION
Bas \l 1033 ]. Transformational leaders use three different methods for managing their employees.
Using Contingent rewards they praise employees for their accomplishments, using Active
management by exception they leave employees to do their work without interventions, but at
the same time predicting and preventing possible problems from occurring. Third method is
Passive management by exception where manager leaves an employee to do his job and waits till
Both Theory Y and Transformational Leadership are very similar because they support
the idea that the major manager’s work is to inspire employees, to show their best potential.
freedom to choose the projects they are most interested in, so they can focus on work that best
fits their interests and helps on self-actualization. There is very little micromanagement, as
CASE ANALYSIS “SYSTEM INFRASTRUCTURE AT GOOGLE” 16
Google prefers employees to take ownership of their work, stay creative and feel their
contribution.
Article presentation
Aim: The main purpose of this paper is to emphasize the role and importance of
Problem: Differences between low and high developed organizations are also due to the
low innovativeness, i.e. the level of innovative working and behavior of all employees.
Hypotheses:
organizations.
2. One of the main factors that impact management innovativeness are personal
This article is relevant to the case study of Google. Google is an example of highly
innovative company when we talk about technology but also in company’s organizational
behavior.
This company focuses on best quality of employees as it means long-term future success.
To keep these employees, management had to adjust the style of management to keep up with
people are encouraged to produce ideas, execute them and learn from mistakes. Management’s
role in this environment is to encourage employees’ creativity not creating additional layers of
bureaucracy or restrictions.
Questions:
CASE ANALYSIS “SYSTEM INFRASTRUCTURE AT GOOGLE” 18
1. What are the main differences between low innovative companies and high innovative
Low Innovative companies are tied by their outdates values/ethics, lacks of innovative
culture, unwillingness to take risks and invest in organizational development. While high
innovative companies are the ones that quickly adapts to new innovations, promotes
entrepreneurship.
creation of new ideas, accepts and adapts to changes and believes that innovativeness in
There are three levels of factors that can influence innovativeness in organizations:
brain trust tech-savvy managers. Seems Google works as unbreakable chain and all the
CASE ANALYSIS “SYSTEM INFRASTRUCTURE AT GOOGLE” 19
departments, including human resource management, are refined to the perfectness. But sky is
the limit.
Even though, the article “System Infrastructure at Google” gives a brief view on how
company’s structure is made, what makes Google the most admired place to seek a job, how
managers solve problems, there are some other points worth to be mentioned in order to improve
Richard Feloni, the journalist at “Business Insider” in his article analyses what can be
done for Google’s workers sake to bring their performances to highest level. Firstly, according to
Feloni, there should be annual switch ups between the teams. The research results of talent
development department states that “employees who had switched from the lowest quartile of
managers (those with relatively bad performance and unhappy teams) to the highest quartile of
managers (those with the best performance and happiest teams) performed better” [ CITATION
Fel15 \l 1033 ]. This switch would be a mutual benefit for both teams. The best manager would be
a role model for a weaker team and make them work better and improve efficiency, while less
skilled team members would be able to learn from the rest of stronger team’s members [ CITATION
Fel15 \l 1033 ].
The other idea of improving microclimate and teams’ efficiency would be anonymous
feedback survey. Employees anonymously rate their managers, each manager would get a report
on what he or she is doing right and on what the catch up is needed. Being anonymous would
bring confrontation risk to the minimum, because not every worker would feel convenient to
speak up about disappointment to his manager. This anonymous survey would strongly
encourage managers to start a discussion on how to lead better[ CITATION Fel15 \l 1033 ].
CASE ANALYSIS “SYSTEM INFRASTRUCTURE AT GOOGLE” 20
Google president of people operations Lazslo Bock in his book “Work Rules!” talks
They give actionable feedback that helps their employees improve their performance.
They do not micromanage by getting involved in details that should be handled at other
levels.
They regularly share with their team relevant information from their own manager and
senior leadership.
They have meaningful discussions about career development with each member of their
They possess the technical expertise required to effectively manage their team.
Their employees would recommend them to their colleagues[ CITATION Fel15 \l 1033 ].
Even though if you have a plan and guideline on how to be a good leader and manager,
most companies are better at exhorting you to be a great manager, rather than telling you how to
be a great manager. Google should train managers on how to be the best in their field and reach
their goals using human resource. It is very easy to give an instruction and tell how to do it, but it
is very hard to implement innovations and execute it smoothly[ CITATION Fel15 \l 1033 ].
CASE ANALYSIS “SYSTEM INFRASTRUCTURE AT GOOGLE” 21
Conclusion
The article “Systems Infrastructure at Google” gives a quite deep understanding about
Google’s inside culture, explains the key to success in managing human resource and tells how
The analysis was made using scientific articles like “A theory of human motivation” by
Maslov, “Human Side of Enterprise” by McGregor and so on. They provide an explanation why
Google is so successful. Though, further analysis can be conducted, but for that purpose d
different perspective on the company should be given. Human resource is one of the major, but
This article proves that giving a total freedom sometimes gives unbelievable advantage,
for example letting Google’s worker do whatever they are best at, and not turning it into chaos.
The lesson is taught that every worker should be in a right place and only then they bring an
ultimate benefit to their teams and company. Innovative Google Company sometimes had to
solve the same problem in various ways. There was a possibility of multiple teams working on
the same matter but exploring different ways of its development. Allowing several teams to work
on their own ideas for the same matter- brought up the perennial question of innovation versus
efficiency. And as we can see both innovation and efficiency succeeded and won. Being versatile
Google started in the garage and grew into the biggest and most innovative company in
the world. At the moment, Google has around 53, 600 full-time employees worldwide and is
extremely successful because it has a clear mission and clear statement, which is: “to organize
the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful” [ CITATION Abo15 \l 1033 ] .
Google never stops; they reach one goal and right away move on another goal. Other companies
CASE ANALYSIS “SYSTEM INFRASTRUCTURE AT GOOGLE” 22
stop when they meet their expectations and goals, but not Google. They even gear up to another
Google pays the biggest attention to the people they hire. This company focuses on best
management had to adjust the style of management to keep up with rapidly changing work
environment and employees expectations in IT industry. Google is probably the best example of
Works Cited
About Google. (2015). Retrieved 10 19, 2015, from Google.com: http://www.google.com/about/
Bass, B. (1985). Leadership and Performance Beyond Expectations. New York Free press.
Feloni, R. (2015, 04 23). Google's HR boss says the best managers practice these 9 habits.
best-managers-2015-4
Gaudin , S. (2015, 08). 5 Things You Need to Know about Google and Alphabet. Retrieved 10
http://www.computerworld.com/article/2971213/search/5-things-you-need-to-know-
about-google-and-alphabet.html
http://www.internetlivestats.com/google-search-statistics/
CASE ANALYSIS “SYSTEM INFRASTRUCTURE AT GOOGLE” 23
Hill, L. A., & Stecker, E. (2010, August 4). System Infrastructure at Google. Harvard Business
McGregor, D. (1960). Human Side of Enterprise. The Management Review. Retrieved 10 17,
Nedelko , Z., & Potocan, V. (2013). The Role of Management Innovativeness in Modern
Economy.
Our history in depth. (2015, 10). Retrieved 10 19, 2015, from Google Company:
https://www.google.com/about/company/history/