The maze is in the mouse: what ails Google
Like many have said, this contains a ton of insightful valuable criticism.That said, I take immense issue with the characterization of the "heroism bad" sentiment at Google:> There are documents that explicitly and proudly deride “heroism” and assert that not only should product teams not encourage “heroes”, they should actively dissuade them. If someone chooses to work twice as hard as is expected of them, they usually will be prevented from doing so because they have to work with others and doing so would force the others to work harder too.As it's been explained to me, this is actually a principle primarily around avoiding inefficient hard work to keep a system healthy, more of a "work smart not hard" thing. Being the only person on the team who can keep prod healthy is not valuable when you could get hit by a bus tomorrow, and this behavior doesn't scale well. That's the gist of the argument and I think it is a good one. His criticism of people not taking enough risk is apt but that's not what this particular piece of culture is about.