Work Rules!

Laszlo Bock Twelve, 404 pages, $30

Laszlo Bock has been head of "people operations" at Google since 2006 and has seen the company grow from 6,000 to almost 60,000 people. He cannot resist repeating, in "Work Rules! Insights from Inside Google that Will Transform How You Live and Lead," a succession of familiar Google tales about nap pods and free food. But once he gets into the nitty-gritty, he is often fascinating.

He starts off with a hymn to the high-freedom approach to management, which gives workers the liberty to solve problems however they want, but says bureaucracy-busting can only go so far. Managers, he says, are as important as accountants. Bock also says he realizes not everyone can duplicate Google's perks, but they can take a page from the company's personnel approach. Only about 0.25 percent of those who apply at Google end up with a job. A top-notch engineer "is worth 300 times or more than an average engineer," he says. That means paying extraordinary performers well.

Bock's most striking management tips have much more to do with hiring and classifying people than with empowering them. Interviews are lousy selection mechanisms. It's far better to give candidates a task similar to the one they will have to perform and see how well they do. Bock also thinks state university graduates are better hires. He says they have probably had to develop a greater degree of grit and determination in the face of difficult personal circumstances.

THE ECONOMIST