* Strategy Rules

* How Google Works

* Founders at Work

If it's more general finance you want to learn coursera should be fine.

If it's leadership qualities, start with the book How Google Works.

In their book, 'How Google works' they claim to settle with more what's best the user than their customer. That's such a bold claim when you are a monopoly.

this is an excellent book! also i would have to recommend How Google Works. its fairly new.

With regard to resources, Google has by far has the most sophisticated access to future tech (quantum, ML for example), the most infrastructure (GGC, oceanic fiber, DC/pops), and their incredible scale comes with great advantages.

1. http://www.howgoogleworks.net/

Most incumbants die from not cannibalizing their own products. Innovation is the key to survival.

The best recipe for a company that isn't printing billions of dollars from Advertising to go bankrupt is try to follow their book and culture.

If you remove infinite money and market dominance would it still work out in the end ? My guess is that it wouldn't.

Google feels sometimes very much like startups with VC money just being inefficient and burning other people money, except of course, Google is burning it's own money that is generated from the non sexy / cool stuff (ads and enterprise email / storage )...

So now with a ship full of passengers thinking they are headed to "bring your whole self to work" town, they are changing course, and are headed to "shut up or you'll be fired" town. I can imagine the passengers are not going to be happy about it.

As they say, it's their company and they can go anywhere they want. It's just hard to understand why they had to change course, and couldn't be the place they kept telling the kids out of college about. It doesn't seem like they are struggling to turn out profits.

I wonder what the original founders think of this? Are they happy about it. Is it the company they thought Google would be...

On the good side, it seems Rebecca already got some offers. At least other companies like people who stand up for their principles.

A bigger question is why was he brought in? Does he need to do a turnaround? Has something gone badly wrong?

What stage are they at? Is there a user base? Do they pay, or is this ad based? Who's the competition? What do you have that they don't? First look at the business from a user perspective, then the technology used to service it. If they're not doing something technically hard, the technology end is about keeping the users happy, scaling and not screwing up.

I think HBR is a major source of management BS. I haven't done the research yet but I bet it has published tons of articles in late 90s about how Apple's culture sucked, and then after its resurrection, how it worked so wonderfully well.

My point is, go create your own billion dollar business, and let HBR package your culture later!

Companies, like customers, have requirements for their needs. If a company needs a potential employee to know how to invert a binary tree then it's in their right to find one.

In Google's case, as you're probably alluding to[0], although I might be mistaken, they've always had the reputation for seeking the best qualified people[1] for their work. I mean look at who's working for them - there's a lot of well-known people in their respective fields that are working for them.

Moreover, I think that the point of these tests is to help assess a potential employee's abstract thinking. And, probably, to understand one's thought process behind the solution - if there's one - to the given problem. (Which, by the way, might be helpful if you're trying to solve AI - something that's right up in Google's alley ;).

Despite the backlash over this, I believe companies will keep doing these types of tests for a long, long time. I don't think this is going away that easily. And I also think that, in the future, these tests might be done in a way you won't even know you're being tested for.

[0] - https://twitter.com/mxcl/status/608682016205344768

[1] - I understand that "best qualified" here might mean different things for different people, but you should take it literally, that is, people who are above the average in terms of abstract thinking. I suggest you read How Google Works[2], they've coined the term Smart Creative which is kind of(?) related to this.

[2] - https://www.howgoogleworks.net/

- Gives interesting insights in the healthy values at Google.

How Not to Be Wrong: The Power of Mathematical Thinking

- Interesting discussions about correct/incorrect interpretations of data/statistics.

Black Hat Python

- Gives short code examples of what can be possible to do.

Programming Collective Intelligence

- Outdated but very inspiring hands on examples of ML in Python

I would recommend:

- The Elements of Style, aka, "the Little book". Made me a credible editor (and documentation writer at the time) almost at zero time.

- Zero to One: in-depth, honest, and non-conformist view of the tech startup landscape. "How Google Works" is a close second.

- The Embedded Systems Dictionary. Not in print but the second-hand paperback is worth it. Great refresher, written with a wit.

Another book I use is "The Developer's Guide to Debugging".

In general I like zero-bullshit or more politely, zero fat books. "The Elements of Style" is one. "The Developer's Guide to Debugging" is also very low in fat, war stories and other nonsense.

There are other books that I like that are less influential.

Aphorism: I don't believe in software books. Exceptions are well-researched reference volumes, e.g., "C: A Reference Manual, 5th edition". I believe in undisputed truths, not in one person's preference or experience over another's.

These days I mostly consult manuals and standard documents. Technical books will only give you that much; see them as a vehicle to learn how to learn. Exceptions are again reference handbooks, that will have to be exhaustive.

I don't believe in trainings, fast, slow or anything. Self-learner here, learned reading by myself around the age of 3 (shocking revelation: have you realized that you can only recall detailed memories only after you have learnt how to read?) Actually it was exactly the winter of 1980 (born 1977). I was a serviceable reader by the coming of sprint 1980 and could read subtitles as fast as the adult is assumed to by early 1981. Educated physicist but self-educated programmer.

- Thinking, Fast and Slow by Daniel Kahneman

- A Briefer History of Time by Stephen Hawking

- The Lean Startup by Eric Ries

- Steve Jobs by Walter Isaacson

- The Industries of the Future by Alec Ross

- Never Split the Difference by Chris Voss

- Start with No by Jim Camp

- How Google Works by Eric Schmidt and Jonathan Rosenberg

- The Everything Store by Brad Stone

- The Inevitable by Kevin Kelly

* Corporate and management issues / misalignments
* Uninteresting work content (e.g. fixing old bugs all the time)
* Time and energy drain

I've been reading the two books about Google culture recently (Work Rules! and How Google Works), both of which cover similar issues and (ostensibly) how Google has responded to them. I understand there must be a huge pool of people out there in similar situations, many of whom are the best of the best. It's also clear that a few large companies are trying to figure out how to appeal to this group, while most large companies continue to be consumed by egos and the day to day grind and fail at this.

The most important benefit to having my own company has (by far) been the time management. I feel like I could have the proper amount of time and energy to devote to a child or two, which would have been unthinkable in previous jobs (mine were in consulting, but the same seems to apply to tech).

However, I've also learned a lot about communication from my company, especially when it comes to things that would cause unhappiness or conflict (not agreeing with management, setting boundaries around time, etc). The biggest leap was realizing that if people react negatively, 1) you don't want to work with these people, and 2) there are a ton of people out there who want to work with you because of this. I hope the OP is able to find people who share his/her extremely positive traits to work with.

(Incidentally, I've learned a lot about communication from the poly community as well, and I'm not at all surprised to read OP's about section after reading this post.)

puts on tinfoil hat

edit: Thank you for the downvote[s]!

edit2: I just remembered a relevant example. Reading "How Google works", I clicked in many ways with their vision about smart creatives and how to run a company properly. However I then immediately realised that it's written by the same a-hole involved in the massive Google-Apple wage fixing scandal [0], and it made me question how much of what's in there is real.

0: http://www.cnet.com/news/judge-rejects-324-5m-wage-fixing-se...

I think many companies use open office formats out of principle. Misguided principles, but principles nonetheless.

I've heard senior recruiters express skepticism about candidates who say they're into "Hard Problems." Experienced engineering managers usually hear that phrase when you're looking for a lifestyle and you don't really care what the application is.

For example, "I have no qualms that your business arbitrages nonconverting clicks from bots and sketchy web traffic (i.e., 99% of the Internet) into Google AdWords revenue, using up a Google customer's ad budget until the customer has barely made a profit... You see, I'm into Hard Problems. Besides, bots don't click twice! It must be real traffic!"

It turns out that junior people on the interview team care a lot more about Hard Problems and the stories in these books than senior people do. And you'd never want your hiring pipeline run by junior people.

In my opinion, Google's focus on Hard Problems has robbed academia of all the sincere Hard Problems people. Then, they've ruined the interview process for everyone else, ironically with the book How Google Works, convincing CEOs that they should be asking about C.S. fundamentals and Hard Problems totally unrelated to their Actual Problems.