Book review: I’m Feeling Lucky: The Confessions of Google Employee Number 59, by Douglas Edwards

by Douglas Edwards

Allen Lane, 432pp, £20

Review by DAVID COX

The rise of the Google empire has inspired awe. A pair of geeky grad students invent a new kind of search technology. They set up a business in a friend’s garage, and within a decade it has become a $200 billion corporation relentlessly transforming the world’s means of accessing information.

This has looked like a miracle not just of technology and commerce but also of worker liberation. Those employed in the Silicon Valley GooglePlex have been reported to feast free in on-campus gourmet restaurants and to enjoy complementary hairdressing, laundry, medical care and counselling. Twenty per cent of their working hours are devoted to projects of their own devising.

Optimists have suggested that the apparent success of this model may point to an unexpectedly blessed future for the lackeys of capitalism. Google’s workplace culture has therefore been much examined, most recently in Steven Levy’s comprehensive In the Plex. Levy, however, was an observer from outside. Douglas Edwards offers the first in-depth account by an insider.

Regrettably, he was not on hand as Google’s story soured, with the uproar over privacy breaches, protests from copyright owners and even grumbling about charges for childcare. Employee number 59 made his exit in 2005; what he therefore offers is a ringside view of the company’s wondrous genesis.

For Edwards, things began in November 1999 when he was interviewed for a marketing job by one of Google’s two founders, Sergey Brin, who arrived clad in gym shorts on inline skates. “I’m going to give you five minutes,” he announced. “When I come back, I want you to explain to me something complicated that I don’t already know.” Then he rolled away to a snacking area.

Edwards passed this test, only to find that the post he’d applied for didn’t exist, although another candidate had also been appointed to it. “Titles aren’t important,” said Brin. “We’ll do better if we have a flat organisation.” A world-class chef and massage therapists had also been hired. Yet this promising impression was to prove misleading.

The chef served great lobster, but Edwards often had to eat it at his desk. He worked 16 hours a day and was on call for the other eight. He couldn’t discover the corporate strategy he was supposed to be implementing because it existed only inside the founders’ heads; they didn’t divulge it, and at times reversed policy in his field behind his back.

By this account, early-years Google was more of a chaotic dictatorship than a benevolent fraternity. Still, everyone was focused on the same goal. Ideas from the most lowly were treated seriously. Above all, the company was conquering the world, and that seemed to make everything all right.

Edwards liked the challenges and his driven colleagues, though personal hygiene became an issue in such a frenzied environment. When the firm went public he was reorganised out of a job, but that was OK, too. Though his kids now barely recognised him, he had helped “advance the human condition”. With stock options thrown in.

This tale may well hold a moral for the world’s woebegone workers, but sadly not the one they might have liked. Get on with it, do as you’re told, put up with demented bosses and forget about work/life balance. No happier way has after all been uncovered.