Google's Project Oxygen

We have mentioned, usually only briefly, Google's "Project Oxygen' for many years, in many podcasts. Now we tell the story - in part because we were there.

Google and many other highly-lauded technology companies have always had, at least according to according to common wisdom, a different, "new" and often antagonistic relationship with management, and managers. The idea is seductive: we're a new and different type of company, nobody has ever really managed "engineers" before (funny!), and because of the nature of our work, our mission, and our personalities, we don't need to be bound by the rules of management.

Google was wrong, as they learned, and to their credit acted upon incredibly well. They were wrong before Project Oxygen as everybody else always has been, about all kinds of things: what management is about, what managers do, and why good managers are valuable and bad managers are toxic.