TedPage: Culture and money

I've read a couple articles on the culture at Google changing as the IPO occurs. Basically, all of them have said that when severe differences in wealth among the employees are created, they won't work as well in the current egalitarian culture that Google has today. The Motley Fool also talks about the ability that the employees will now have to start their own companies -- which is very interesting. Also, early retirement could definately be an issue.

All in all, I think in many ways it is sad how money changes things. I wish the folks at Google lots of luck, and I'm happy that a company with the mantra of Do no Evil is sucessful. But, I hate to see it change a culture, and perhaps, bring a good company down. I don't think that Communism will ever be successful when you factor in human greed, but I love the ideal of everyone just taking what they need and being happy. Too bad it's ideal and not practical.

I guess this shows the issues with retaining tallent in today's job market. What do employees really want? If you're at Google, and you wanted money, it is probably a good time to leave. If you wanted to make the world's best search engine, probably not a bad time to stay -- you'll have many more resources to do it. Modivation is a tricky thing.

I think that many business types believe that all people are modivated by stock options, these are dollars in the pocket (if you assume that the stock market will grow at ~10%). But, I don't think that most engineers are modivated by that (atleast I'm not). They're more modivated by creating great products and helping people. Perhaps I'm being too ideal again, but I'd like to think that is what they'd want. But, then again, I'd like to think that doctors are modivated by curing people -- and more and more that is shown not to be the case.

I think what it comes down to is that modiviation is individual. You need to figure out what your modiviation is, and that way you can figure out how to make you happy.