Google Visit: lessons learned
Google is an internet behemoth, isn’t it? A single G team is bigger than whole Lunar. And it’s Google. They know everything. Yet they’re still interested in smaller companies than theirs.
We’ve met a gang of Google’s Product Manager freshmen last Friday. They came to our office to learn how Lunar Logic works. Why?
Imagine that you finish your college and get employed by Google. Straight away. As a product manager.
That’s more or less what the Associate Product Manager programme is about. Google wants young people unsullied by the traditional management approach. You’ve got to excel at maths etc., but you get loads of perks. One of them is travelling across the globe to visit other software companies. To learn & compare their approach with that of other players. Simple!
Google’s management freshmen learned about our flat structure, resulting in having only one PM of our own (Paweł Brodziński). Also being a scrum master and CEO as well.
We’ve told them about our smashing parliament watch app that never got released due to a revolution in a certain middle eastern country… that was quite philosophical, actually!
And we found out that Google is more technocratic than it seems. It manifests in the technical people having more to say in product development than e.g. marketing depts. Which doesn’t mean they’ve got nothing to say, of course.
It’s a pity we didn’t have more time, for the visit was very inspiring. Hope we get more of such in the future :)