Prime Time 6, Coursebook mit Audio-CD und DVD

7 The World of Google Before you read a) What do you know about Google? b) Describe to your partner what you can see in the photograph. Then talk about the following: • What impression does the office give of Google’s corporate culture? • What kind of people do you think work there? Read the interview: Google’s culture czar a) Read a text about Stacy Savides Sullivan, Google’s “chief culture officer”, and underline things that seem to be different from other companies. Q: What do you do as chief culture o‹cer? A: I work with employees around the world to †nd out ways to maintain and enhance and develop our culture and to keep the core values we had in the very beginning – a ¥at organisation, a lack of hierarchy, a collaborative environment – to keep these as we continue to grow. It’s hard to imagine how you can keep a Žat organisation with 12,000 employees. But what are the characteristics of the Google culture in general? I would characterise the culture as one that is team-oriented, very collaborative and encouraging people to think non-traditionally, di erent from where they ever worked before – working with integrity and for the good of the company and for the good of the world, which is closely connected to our overall mission of making information accessible to the world. What are some of the challenges you are ’nding in your role, maybe related to the enormous growth of the company? I think one of the hardest things to do is to make sure that we are hiring people who have the kind of traits that we’re looking for in a Google-y employee. Google-y is de†ned as somebody who is fairly ¥exible, adaptable and not focusing on titles and hierarchy, and just gets stu done. So we put a lot of focus in when we are interviewing to try to †nd out if a person has the skill set and experience potential to do the job from a background standpoint in addition to academics and credentials. But they are also going to be good culture or team †ts. Can you give me an example of a question that might be asked during an interview to determine whether they are Google-y enough? You know, there are no standard questions that I know of. But we might ask a question. is is just theoretical, but it could be “How many bread boxes could you †t in an airplane?” or something like that. Obviously, there’s no right answer, but we’re just trying to †gure out how people think. I’ve heard about a happiness survey at Google. Can you tell me more about that? e last few years we’ve been doing a happiness survey as part of our annual global company survey to †nd out how happy people are and what it’s going to take to keep them working at the company. e results ended up being centred a lot on career development and growth. So career development is more of a focus than giving more stock options or increasing salaries. What do you think is the most appreciated perk? What do you get the most positive feedback on? It would have to be the food. We have some type of lunch in every Google o©ce. In places where we have room to have a cafeteria, we have our own and we hire our own chefs. And the reason why it is such an incredible perk is it keeps people on campus, it’s all organic, it’s healthy. At the headquarters we have breakfast, lunch and dinner. 1 2 5 10 15 20 25 30 98 The world of work Nur zu Prüfzwecken – Eigentum des Verlags öbv