FastCompany discusses Google.

"Flexibility is expensive," says Craig Silverstein, a 30-year-old engineer who dropped his pursuit of a Stanford PhD to become Google's first employee. "But we think that flexibility gives you a better product. Are we right? I think we're right. More important, that's the sort of company I want to work for."

The emphasis added was mine. While I applaud the man's passion about his job, and I applaud the work that Google has done, I question the veracity of the statement. As an engineer you should be searching for the empirical evidence, not giving knee-jerk responses. Also, you need to understand that the sort of company you want to work for is irrelevant to the survivability of said company.

I'm sure anyone who reads this will assume I'm bashing Google. I'm not. I'm extremely interested in the upcoming IPO because it will lay bare the truth of the enterprise. How much money do they make? How much do they spend on employee perks? Do these things really contribute to the bottom line? Most importantly, can Google survive being a public company? Wall Street has an insane pull on people and Google's culture seems to border on geek-communism. It will be an interesting clash.

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