Just as Pace (2006) says “There is a new era in business and companies have move up to a global platforms, communication between employee have moved from the phone and face to face meetings to primarily communicating through email. Not too long ago all men wore suits and ties to work and women did not hold prominent positions in the workplace. All this has changed in the recent years. More companies are now adopting a casual work environment with less dress code restrictions and a better work/life balance. But there are still companies out there who still hold on to the traditional values of business and it’s protocols. In the next paragraphs I hope to outline the protocols and culture of Google and how it came to be, as well as compare and contrast it a more traditional company, Goldman Sach. I will also outline Google’s failed experience in China how the Google culture influenced that.
Google’s Founders: Montessori Reason for It’s Culture “You can’t understand Google unless you know Larry Page and Sergey Brin were Montessori kids,” Levey (2011). Montessori schools are schools based on the educational philosophy of Maria Montessori, an Italian physician who believed children should be allowed the freedom to pursue whatever interest them. Knowing this you can really understand the culture of Google why their business protocols are unique to traditional businesses. Like so many other technology start-ups Google was founded in the mid-90’s by a pair of college buddies, Page and Brin, while attending Stanford. The groundwork for Google was laid while in college and the pagerank, which is the algorithm used to catalog the internet into Google, and created while the Page and Brin were still obtaining their Phd in Computer Science. Both of the founders felt comfortable in the mediocrity of academia, Levy 2011). This being said they refused to hold a corporate job prior to the incorporation of their company. Today Google employs over 30,000 employees across world and their services are used by billions. But as I mentioned before both are Montessori kids, Sergey Brin obtained his undergrad in 3 years from the University of Maryland and became the youngest student to be accepted in the Stanford’s Phd program. While attending at Stanford Brin rather than filling his workload by taking advanced computer science classes he took electives classes in swimming, gymnastics, and sailing (pg13). Meanwhile Page made a name for himself on campus by providing thesis’s with outlandish ideas including space tethers and solar kites; His attitude,“here is what I think I can do,” became a valuable asset in creating today’s culture in Google (pg 14). Google has today created projects like the self driving car and help small companies like Youtube grow into the behemoth it is today.
Google’s “No Dress Code” One of things I enjoy most today is Tech Data is a business casual dress company as of January 2013, which means we have the option to wear jeans every day at our leisure. This gives us the opportunity to naturally express our individuality with clothes we wear rather than the same old same old suit pants and shirt. Business dress has gone through a recent revolution, now more companies opt for a more casual dress when prior to suit and ties were required for all men, Pace (2006). Google’s relaxed atmosphere can be proudly displayed in their employees dress. Steven Levy outlines his amazement when first meeting the co-founders in 1998, they were both not outfitted in a conservative pair jeans and a T-shirt but found Brin in a cow suit and Page dressed as Viking (Levy 2011 pg 3). Granted they were introduced on Halloween but that same tradition carries on today and currently no dress code in place within the company. Employees are also encourage to bring their pets to work with them; where most companies draw the line Google erases them even when applying dress codes for interviewing. In an interview with Google Recruiter, Bryan Power, and Mashable he explains, "I've seen people come in in board shorts and a T-shirt and blow [us] away with their intellect, and I've seen people dressed to the nines who were unprepared," (Mashable 2011). Knowing this makes myself want to work for a company with a such a relaxed atmosphere like Google.
Google’s Innovation Protocol Now understanding Page and Brin and their Montessori approach to school, life, and eventually their company, Google, helps to understand their protocols today. Google’s culture is a very unique and has instituted many protocols in business that are unique to only them. Google’s encourages their employees to question authority, by asking why aren’t there dogs at work? Or Why isn’t there free snacks (Levy 2011)?
One unique approach to running their business is the 20% percent project. This idea is a celebrates the beliefs of Montessori where every engineer is required to 20% of their work week on a project not related to their regular work function. This is unheard of in business today but was a common practice in the company, 3M which produced the idea for the “Post-it” note in 1980 when Art Fry took the previously fail glue to use on bookmark, (Mitsch 1990). This approach is outlined in Steven Levy’s book Into the Plex. Levy quotes the founders, “We designed Google to be the kind of place where the kind of people we wanted to work here would work here for free,” (Levy 2011). The 20% percent project created countless innovations from employee’s including, Google News and Gmail. Former Google CEO, Eric Schmidt, said, “The American university system is the greatest innovation engine ever invented. (Levy 2011 136).” This mindset helps understand the Google campus set-up which is equip with employee housing, free cafeteria, and free transportation between buildings with bicycles and buses. Just as Page and Brin started their professional careers in college by creating Google they created the campus was created to be an extension of college. Just as written previously employees enjoy the absence of dress codes and free reign to create new ideas out of their innovative 20% projects. The traditional business protocol mantra heard today is, “complete work on work time” but this “out of the box” idea of providing employees time to work on whatever they wanted continue to build a work/play environment that many flock to, but Google still high expectations of their employees. While most start-ups like Apple, Facebook, and Microsoft started from college dropouts; Google still sets the bar high for all employee applicants.
Google’s Protocol for Recruiting
Despite the fun atmosphere and relaxed culture, Google takes it’s hiring very seriously. Page and Brin come from the highest top percentile of their postgraduate coursework. Page was quoted saying,”Anyone hired at Google should be capable of engaging him in a fascinating discussion should he be stuck at an airport with the employee on a business trip,”(Levy 138). This hiring protocol helps weed out the individuals who might not fit intellectually at Google. The founders even went as far as creating a hiring rubric for all potential employees. This rubric includes SAT scores, GPA from high school and collegiate work, and even the prestige level of all schools attended. In the beginning years it was not unheard of for a candidate to go through 20 interviews before a hiring counsel of choice individuals prior to being offered a position. To this day Larry Page as acting CEO approves or decline all potential new hires. All recruit information in tallied into their people database and skimmed by Page, he states,”It only takes 15-20 minutes to scan and hire about a hundred people.” Working at Google is sought out by many and looked to as the elite company in technology but lets parallel them to an Elite company with a similar recruitment style.
Goldman Sachs Comparison. Just as Google is thought as being an elite tech company; Goldman Sachs is the elite investment bank. Goldman Sachs was founded by Marcus Goldman and his son-in-law Samuel Sachs in the late 19th century. The company gained notoriety in the 20th century and came to prominence in the IPO, initial public offering, market, with the most notable IPO being of Sears, Roebuck and Company in 1906 (Endlich 2000). Goldman differs any many ways for example the dress code is very much still traditional suit and tie and theirs casuals are still highly encourage to wear expensive designer clothes and tie (Elevator 2013). The one thing that clearly identifies with Google is their elitist attitude towards their recruitment. In 1906 Goldman Sachs became the first company to recruit heavily from the top MBA schools in America, (Endlich 2000), which is similar to Google and still practiced today. This is not unlike today in their recruitment efforts and similar to Google each candidate must undergo a grueling interview process. I completed my undergrad from the University of South Florida with Bachelors in Finance. While attending my fellow students shared stories of their friends at USF interviewing just to become a summer intern; they explained the use of elevator interviews. This interview technique was performed in Tampa in the Suntrust building which stands at 36 floors. The interviewee had until the they reached the top of the building to answers the Goldman Sach recruiter’s questions. Though these accounts were from 3rd parties they can be confirmed from an online article on the eFinancial Careers website. The author shares how Goldman rented out a number of hotel seminar rooms to conduct an aptitude test and host several rounds of interviews (Banker 2013).
Working at Goldman is unlike Google’s approach to question authority. The job of an investment banker to provide a service to their high net worth clients and partners. The object is to make a lot of money without making a lot of mistakes. As we learned in the late 2000’s market crisis there is very little room for error.
Goldman believes they are the best and only hires from the best, they look to as the ideal investment bank where the top candidates highly compete to work, but in the financial field the traditional protocols of business are intact. The dress code is professional business attire and each employee is expected to work very long hours conducting with very little work/life balance. Parallelled to Google, Goldman Sachs might seem over the top with their protocols but associates at Goldmans is expected to impress high networth clients with their first impression which is unlike Google’s customer who are connected virtually. With Goldman Sachs and Google being from entirely different centuries it makes sense of how different their protocols are from each other. What might work with the 21st first century Google would not necessarily work with the 20th Century Goldman Sachs, but in the same vain they both have climbed to the top of their business sectors.
Google’s Struggle in China As Google grew in the beginning of the 21st century so did China as a country. More and more business sought out the once closed “Red Giant” as the new frontier. In 2004, despite the ear of caution the Google’s policy director, Andrew McLaughlin, Google entered the Chinese market and set up an engineering center. McLaughlin explained, “Don’t go into countries that are going to force you to censor your business.” (Levy 2011). Despite this warning Page very optimistic and with the same “here is what I think I can do,” attitude decided to move forward anyway. Google hired a highly celebrated Chinese computer scientist, Kai-Fu Lee, to be the President of the Chinese business. Google’s culture was very different from Chinese business culture, Chinese business also have an aversion to doing business with any companies unfamiliar with them (Seligman 1999). Lee understanding of Chinese culture knew that any individuals who had worked for a Chinese company prior would not fit into Google’s culture so he sought out young programmers to attempt to make an identical culture as they had in the US. The teams were set up using American programmers as team leads, but that later failed when most programmers returned to the states after finding it hard to navigate through China’s internet restrictions and culture.That then left a predominantly Chinese workforce under Lees commands, but with Lee’s celebrity as a successful Chinese programmer at Google and previously Apple and Microsoft his position was treated more as a celebrity than boss. Google today has a practice of allowing employees to create their own titles, which was practiced in China and only encouraged most programmers to title themselves as, “Assistant to President Lee (Levey 2011).” The atmosphere also crumbled when he 20% project was met with the majority of the employees spending the time asking Mr. Lee what he would like them to work. Chinese culture unlike American stills hold true to honor and respect in the workplace, (Seligman 1999) and with a culture in Google where they strive to question authority and push the boundaries with technology only led to ultimate partial exit from the Chinese search market.
Conclusion
Companies like google have welcomed in the new era of business protocols with open arms and adopted a casual work environment with less dress code restrictions and a better work/life balance. But there are still companies out there like Goldman Sachs who still hold on to the traditional values of business and it’s protocols in America to continue to succeed as the top investment bank. Google also eventually learned this first hand from their failed experience in China and quickly learned that some cultures aren't ready for its unique take in business protocols.

References
Banker, Girl. (2013). How I Went Through the Application and Interview Process and Got An Internship With Goldman Sach. eFiancial Careers. Retrieved from http://news.efinancialcareers.com/
Endlich, Lisa J. (2000). Goldman Sachs: The Culture Of Success, pg 37-43,138. Touchstone.
Girard, Bernard. (2009). The Google Way, pg 8. No Starch Press
Levy, Steven. (2011). In The Plex,pg 12,121-124,135-141,289-291. Simon & Schuster Inc.
Pace, J. (2006). The workplace: Today and Tomorrow, Book 1, pp. 63,68. Boston: McGraw Hill.
Elevator, G.S. (2013). The Unauthorized Rules of How to Dress at Goldman Sachs.
Business insider. Retrieved from http://www.businessinsider.com/
Mitsch, Ronald A. (1990) Three Roads to Innovation. Journal of Business Strategy, Vol. 11 (Issue: 5), pp.18 - 21. http://dx.doi.org/10.1108/eb060081
Seligman,Scott. (1999). Chinese Business Etiquette: A Guide to Protocol, Manners, and Culture in the People's Republic of China, Ch. 2. Grand Central Publishing.