Excerpt from Ken Auletta’s The Search Party
On Tuesdays, Brin, Page, and Schmidt hold product-strategy meetings, which are dominated by engineers. I was permitted to attend one, on the condition that the product, and the engineers, not be identified, but the tenor of the meeting was clear enough: Page and Brin had wanted an upgrade of an existing product, and they were unhappy with what they were hearing from the engineers. At first, they were stonily silent, slid down in their chairs, and occasionally leaned over to whisper to each other. Schmidt began with technical questions, but then he switched roles and tried to draw out Page and Brin, saying, “Larry, say what’s really bugging you.”Page said that the engineers were not ambitious enough. Brin agreed, and said that the proposals were “muddled” and too cautious.
“We wanted something big,” Page added. “Instead, you proposed something small. Why are you so resistant?”
The head of the engineering team said that the founders’ own proposed changes would be too costly in money, time, and engineering talent.
Schmidt—the only person at the meeting wearing a tie—tried to summarize their differences. He noted that Brin and Page wanted to start by deciding the outcome, while the product team focussed first on the process, and concluded that the engineering would prove too “disruptive” to achieve the goal.
“I’m just worried that we designed the wrong thing,” Brin said. “And you’re telling me you’re not designing the optimum system. I think that’s a mistake… . I’m trying to give you permission.”
The product team went on to make a slide presentation, but everyone there realized that the issues would not be resolved that day. Schmidt told the team to report back with a detailed design “that is responsive to Larry and Sergey’s criticism,” and to clarify “what it takes to build a good product,” and what it would cost in time and money. However, he balanced this with praise: “But this is very well done. I love it when people show me the flaws in our products.”
