Newsweek article (December 2005) on Google’s Ten Golden Rules, and possible options for Gen X managers thinking about growing an organization of Gen X contributors.

On their list:

• Make coordination easy. Because all members of a team are within a few feet of one another, it is relatively easy to coordinate projects. In addition to physical proximity, each Googler e-mails a snippet once a week to his work group describing what he has done in the last week. This gives everyone an easy way to track what everyone else is up to, making it much easier to monitor progress and synchronize work flow.
• Data drive decisions. At Google, almost every decision is based on quantitative analysis. We’ve built systems to manage information, not only on the Internet at large, but also internally. We have dozens of analysts who plow through the data, analyze performance metrics and plot trends to keep us as up to date as possible. We have a raft of online “dashboards” for every business we work in that provide up-to-the-minute snapshots of where we are.
• Cater to their every need. As Drucker says, the goal is to “strip away everything that gets in their way.” We provide a standard package of fringe benefits, but on top of that are first-class dining facilities, gyms, laundry rooms, massage rooms, haircuts, carwashes, dry cleaning, commuting buses—just about anything a hardworking engineer might want. Let’s face it: programmers want to program, they don’t want to do their laundry. So we make it easy for them to do both.

Is this the battlefield for talent? Are you ready to manage and compete in this environment?

Hat tip to SystematicHR.