Always Day One

An accessible and insightful look at the management practices & culture of Amazon, Facebook, Google, Apple and Microsoft.

Autora som počul rozprávať na WebSummite v Lisabone, kniha podľa mňa sľubuje oveľa viac než nakoniec dá, ale v princípe celkom verne hľadá odpoveď na otázku, čo robia firmy ako Amazon, Google alebo Facebook inak, že sa im relatívne dlho darí držať na špici. <br /><br />Cez desiatky interviews so súčasnými a bývalými zamestnancami sa snaží poskladať obraz nejakej “formuly” (Engineer´s mindset) ako inovovať, aj keď už ste veľká firma, ktorej väčšinu času zaberá dojenie kravy (súčasného biznisu). <br /><br />Sú to v podstate tri piliere:<br />- democratic invention (že nápady musia prúdiť zdola hore bez ohľadu na to kto s nimi prišiel - Amazon)<br />- contraint-free hierarchy (v podstate pokus o tyrkysovú organizáciu - trochu Facebook, aj keď s veľa vecami by som nesúhlasil)<br />- collaboration (že vo firme každý s každým môže na nápade robiť a nik tomu nebráni)<br /><br />Čiže žiadna mágia, ale zas super veľa konkrétnych príkladov ako to v tých firmách robia. Amazon cez pištoľ pri hlave - musíš inovovať, inak ťa automatizujeme, Facebook cez šialený systém feedbackovania každého každým a všetkého všetkými. Google cez prepracovaný systém ako ľudia vedia kolaborovať na projektoch. <br /><br />Super boli antipríklady - ako Apple zabilo viacero projektov lebo nik nesmie vedieť na čom pracujú ľudia z iných oddelení. Alebo Microsoft ktorý zabíjal Explorer aby Google nekradol užívateľov Officu pre svoje Docs. <br /><br />Celkovo fajn čitanie pre každého kto sa venuje corporate inováciám, zázraky nečakajte, len také feel-good čítanie plné anekdot a cez to kúsoček umelá snaha ich pospájať do nejakého frameworku. <br /><br /><br />—-<br /><br />Názov knihy je inak prebraný od Bezosa z Amazonu, ktorý hovorí, že startupy sú day one (akože čosi sme vymysleli a teraz riešime čo s tým) a veľké firmy sú day two (akože doja kravu). On tvrdí, že vždy musíš zostať v day one. <br /><br />“What does Day Two look like?” Bezos asked. “Day Two is stasis, followed by irrelevance, followed by excruciating, painful decline, followed by death.”

"Day One at Amazon is code for inventing like a startup, with little regard for legacy. It’s an acknowledgment that competitors today can create new products at record speeds—thanks to advances in artificial intelligence and cloud computing especially—so you might as well build for the future, even at the present’s expense." Day Two in Bezos' own words is "stasis, followed by irrelevance, followed by excruciating, painful decline, followed by death.”<br /><br />Always Day One is a gripping narrative of the Famous Five often referred to as FAAMG or the Big Five; FAAMG is an acronym used for the tech giants represented by Alphabet (GOOG), Amazon (AMZN), Facebook (FB), and Apple (AAPL), and Microsoft (MSFT). The author has adroitly brought out the culture and leadership practices at these firms which show no signs of aging.<br /><br />Amazon's inventive culture, Facebook's internal feedback, Apple's design focus, Google's collaborative strength and Microsoft's growth mindset portrays the immense value the "Engineering Mindset" is given at these workplaces. With over 130 interview insights and several tech initiatives covered including the Amazon Go launch, Google's open debate and internal employee disagreement and the Microsoft's dramatic turnaround, the book deep dives into the battle these tech behemoths are fighting everyday especially with the emerging startup ecosystem and advancements in AI/ML in the backdrop of shift from industrial economy to knowledge economy. There is a slight backlash to Apple owing to HomePod and Apple Car failure and sole dependency on iPhone in terms of its revenue share but the current trillion dollar market cap is still a testament that Apple is a force to reckon with.<br /><br />Towards the end of the book, there is a series of Black Mirror-esque scenarios imagined out with the dark side of AI which makes up for an interesting discourse. The book ends on a positive note though with discussions around thoughtful invention and bias removal from AI systems and reimagines a future world of endless possibilities with major shifts in work and education.

Easily one of the best books on the culture of the current behemoths. Extremely well researched and hits the bull’s eye on what drives these companies. <br />Lessons for the entire corporate world are strewn throughout. <br />Must read.

really well-written and well-researched! I think this is quite a fair, nuanced approach to evaluating what makes big tech cos tick, pinpointing the particular elements of org culture that have driven success while also highlighting that it's these same elements that have made them so often exploitative, dangerous, etc. <br /><br />I read most of this after reading ben tarnoff's <a href="https://logicmag.io/the-making-of-the-tech-worker-movement/full-text/" rel="nofollow noopener">piece on the tech worker movement</a>, which was an interesting lens on the content to say the least.

I loved this book! It's a well-written and captivating book about the cultures of Amazon, Facebook, Google, Microsoft and Apple. It takes you inside these companies and describes how their culture allows it to grow or stumble. For those interested in tech or management, this is a must read.

Reasonable short mainstream summary of management culture at Facebook/Google/Apple/Amazon/Microsoft. Nothing really new or insightful if you understand how these companies work, but a good summary for outsiders. The "black mirror" dark potential chapters about tech were sort of grafted on at the end (I think to flesh out an already short book), but were also done adequately well.

If you like the free magazine you get in domestic business class then you'll love this book.

How can corporates develop competitive advantages and stay relevant with changing business environment of today and tomorrow? One way to find answer is to get into the inner workings of today's successful technological giants; and that's where "Always Day One" comes handy. This book is an abridged version of cultures developed in Amazon, Facebook, Google, Apple and Microsoft. These cultures help these companies to build advantage for success. But as the common proverb goes <i>"Excess of everything is bad"</i>, these companies sometimes find themselves in difficult situation due to excess of a particular behaviour losing track of the right thing or to misuse of tools of advantage or to even loss of adaptability.<br /><br />The key take aways:<br /><b>Amazon:</b><br /><u>Culture</u>: <i>"Always Day One" or entrepreneur mindset</i><br /><u>Processes</u>: <i>"Six pager" avoiding presentation driven biases, Idea initiator made lead for implementation, AI and Automation used for execution to free up resources for idea generation or innovation</i><br /><u>Advantage</u>: <i>Agile and Inventive</i><br /><u>Challenges</u>: <i>Personal life imbalance due to pressure of everyday entrepreneur mindset and inexcusably high customer focus</i><br /><u>Future</u>: <i>Amazon strives to make people technically skilled and creative at the same time. With this approach, the company has been able to bring great ideas to life and further trying to generate more such ideas. Amazon Go is next such thing where consumers can just walk in, pick the stuffs they want to purchase and walk out without getting into billing queues (The amount is automatically deducted through your mobile app)</i><br /><br /><b>Facebook:</b><br /><u>Culture</u>: <i>Feedback and learning environment, bottoms up approach for idea generation</i><br /><u>Processes</u>: <i>Friday's Q&amp;A, Internal groups, Inner Circle and Product Reviews (Mark surrounds himself with disagreeable givers to get alternate point of views)</i><br /><u>Advantage</u>: <i>Innovative and better decisions based on alternate point of views</i><br /><u>Challenges</u>: <i>Moral risks of new technology. To address this, Facebook has started analysing risks based on threats, vulnerability and motives of users before feature deployment </i><br /><u>Future</u>: <i>The ultimate vision of next computing platform (VR and AR) based on organizational principle, making it around people rather than just tasks</i><br /><br /><b>Google:</b><br /><u>Culture</u>: <i>Reinventing itself for changing consumer preferences; Engineer's mindset</i><br /><u>Processes</u>: <i>Collaboration tools - Monthly Q&amp;A, Dory(a Q&amp;A tool) and internal social media</i><br /><u>Advantage</u>: <i>Quick idea flow and better collaboration; Adaptability (Organisation Adaptability - Split into Alphabet and its subsidiaries to address right focus for various ideas; Product Adaptability - Chrome to address browser slowness issues, Google search bar in mobile to operate independent of browser)</i><br /><u>Challenges</u>: <i>Misuse of collaboration tools, Unclear AI policies (Google tried to address this by coming up with AI guidelines which states its development only for overall good of humans)</i><br /><u>Future</u>: <i>Autonomous cars and Assistant which will combine all google tools and utilise Computer vision, voice recognition and natural language understanding for the next age search engine</i><br /><br /><b>Apple:</b><br /><u>Culture</u>: <i>Refinement culture; Secrecy, Top down approach; Design driven</i><br /><u>Processes</u>: <i>Hierarchical, Idea generation by top few and execution focus down</i><br /><u>Advantage</u>: <i>Avoids ambiguity in execution, Refined design (exceptional touch and feel of products), Marketing skill bolstered by secrecy</i><br /><u>Challenges</u>: <i>Lack of pace and sufficient idea generation in fast changing world. This mainly due to secrecy which impedes collaboration. iPhone has already reached a form beyond which there is seemingly no marginal benefit of improvement for customers</i><br /><u>Future</u>: <i>Although Apple had been opportunistic to utilise iphone security episode to bolster its position as a brand not compromising data security, it still has a lot to do to become inventive</i><br /><br /><b>Microsoft:</b><br /><u>Culture</u>: <i>Democratic invention, Engineer's mindset, Growth mindset, Being the customer philosophy, Empathic approach, Focus on problem understanding rather than pressured to find solution </i><br /><u>Processes</u>: <i>Bottoms up idea generation, Venture style pitch committee for its AI ideas, Quarterly Connects for feedback, Reduced hierarchy and approachable seniors, "One Week" an yearly employee gathering for hackathon, Re-organisation to reduce unwanted conflicts and facilitate collaboration, Performance rating more based on collaborative efforts than individual to prevent toxic competition between individuals hindering work</i><br /><u>Advantage</u>: <i>Ease of idea build up through higher collaboration</i><br /><u>Challenges</u>: <i>The company faced its challenge in earlier decade when "the Asset" mindset prevailed. This approach hindered innovation by prioritizing reaping of benefits from current products over the future. With Satya Nadella at its helm, Microsoft has been able to bring about cultural changes to suit today's world which are evident from a trillion dollar evaluation of the firm</i><br /><u>Future</u>: <i>Microsoft has been able to transform itself under Satya Nadella's leadership and looking poised towards goal of new cloud based operating system with its products such as Azure</i><br /><br />"A look into the Black Mirror" chapter covers the perils of AI. One of the prime impending threat of AI is further erosion of humanity's weakening sense of meaning. Top three things which give meaning to life are: Friends &amp; Family, Religion and Work &amp; Money. Modern technology is weakening all three. Author wonders whether humans could ever live in a world where their sense of self-worth is divorced from work. But then there is an alternate view: <i>"Kids don't contribute anything economically, but many of them still seem to have pretty worthwhile, happy lives" </i><br /><br />Finally, the book culminates with the vision on future leadership. Leaders of future are expected to proactively spark ingenuity through less defined work to employees thus creating room for ideas. They are also expected to continuously monitor their technology for bias. To support the future world, even education needs to change. It needs to inculcate independent thought, creativity and novelty rather than current system built around obedience and repetition. <br /><br />Though the book is written more in the form of journalism than a literary work and is sometimes marred by cliched phrases, it still brings out knowledge of culture from successful firms in concise manner. It is a worthwhile read, specially for those who have only nascent knowledge of workings of these companies.

Interesting think pieces on the innovative or lack their of practices at Amazon, Facebook, Google Apple and Microsoft.<br /><br />Each chapter talks of their operational structures, their success and some critiques of the companies. The end of the book speaks to AI and the future of work.<br /><br />It was entertaining but the structure the book was written in became a bit predictable and monotonous making the final chapters a little bit of a laboured read. However it’s full of entertaining stories, gems of managerial knowledge, and some good-human principles.