Something to readReviews & performance
Work Rules!
Google's former head of people on how it hired, rated, paid and developed its staff
Why it’s worth your time
Work Rules!, by Laszlo Bock, opens the machinery of reviews, pay and hiring at Google, written by the executive who ran it. Its account may explain a process you're living through even if your employer isn't Google.
Keeping growth and pay in separate conversations
The book · About 7 hours of reading · Buy or borrow
How to get it
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- Read the parts on performance and pay.
Bock covers hiring, reviews, development and pay in turn. Start with how Google set and compared ratings and how it kept the reward conversation apart from the development one, then go back to hiring if you interview people.
- Ask for a development conversation with no rating attached.
Ask your manager for twenty minutes, away from review season, only about what you could get better at and what would help. Say up front that it isn't about your rating.
You“Could we take twenty minutes, well away from review time, for your advice on what I could get better at this year? No rating needed, I'm just after your view.”
Good moments for this: a few months after a reviewwhen ratings season starts to loomafter a new manager arrives
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Making it work for you
Every workplace is different. Here’s what to think about before you start, and what might get in the way.
Things to think about
Calibrated ratings can come without separate development conversations, or the reverse. Knowing which pieces exist tells you which conversations you may need to ask for, and Bock's account gives you the words.
What might make this harder
Ask for advice on one specific skill instead, such as running a meeting or writing a proposal, and leave the rating out of the conversation. Bock's point is the separation, which a narrow question can still give you.
Questions people ask
What is Work Rules! by Laszlo Bock about?
A 2015 book by Laszlo Bock, who led people operations at Google, on how the company hired, evaluated, developed and paid its staff. Built from Google's own practices and the data behind them, it argues that trusting people with freedom, and using evidence instead of gut feel, makes for better workplaces.
What does pay unfairly mean in Work Rules?
Bock's case that pay should vary widely between people, because a small number tend to contribute far more than the rest. He presents that unequal pay as the fairer approach.
How do I get feedback from my manager outside a performance review?
Ask for a short conversation at a quiet time of year, about one or two skills, and say it isn't about your rating. Framing it as a request for advice, what would you work on in my place, can make it easier for a manager to be specific.
What it says, and how it holds up
Google kept apart two conversations that often run together at work: the one about your rating and pay, and the one about how to get better. Laszlo Bock, who ran what Google calls people operations, its version of HR, tells how the company hired, rated, paid and developed people. Ratings went through a calibration process before they were final, which usually means managers comparing their draft ratings so one generous scale doesn't decide everything. Pay was allowed to vary widely, which Bock frames as paying unfairly on purpose. Hiring decisions weren't left to the manager of the team alone. In Bock's telling, the separation is built into the system itself.
Barry Schwartz, the psychologist, singled out that separation as both important and counterintuitive, in his 2015 review for The Psych Report (now part of Behavioral Scientist). His reasoning runs through teaching: a teacher whose job rides on a standardized test learns to teach to the test, and the test stops measuring much. Keep the consequences elsewhere, and the evaluation can go back to helping. Schwartz admired the book overall, and anticipated the obvious objection, that a company with Google's money can afford anything; he reports Bock's answer that many of the practices cost little or nothing.
The account is a snapshot. It was written by the executive who designed much of the system, at a high point for the company, and Bock has since left Google. Google's own review process has been reworked since, and the job cuts it announced in early 2023 are a reminder that a patient approach to weak performers, which is how Schwartz read the book, doesn't protect anyone from a round of layoffs. Bock's reasons can apply where Google's specific practices don't.
In a small company, one manager may set your rating, your raise and the agenda for your growth, and Bock's separation depends on someone else having a hand in pay. A development chat there may still feel like it's on the record, and that's a fair feeling. Keeping the advice narrow and practical, a specific skill and what good looks like, tends to keep it about growth.
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Picked by Truest and described in our own words. The original belongs to its creator. Last updated October 9, 2026. We sell a career membership; where that’s relevant above, we say so.