Reading notes for Code Fellows!
The following information was generated based on the article What Google Learned From Its Quest to Build the Perfect Team, found in The New York Times Magazine:
Many of today’s most valuable firms have come to realize that “employee performance optimization” isn’t enough. As commerce becomes increasingly global and complex, most modern work has become predominantly team-based.
In Silicon Valley, software engineers are encouraged to work together. Studies show that groups tend to innovate faster, see mistakes more quickly and find better solutions to problems. If a company wants to move forward, it needs to influence not only how people work but also how they work together.
In 2012, Google initiated Project Aristotle to study why some of Google’s teams excelled where others languished. After studying the composition of hundreds of teams within Google, Project Aristotle determined that the ‘who’ part of the equation did not seem to matter.
Some groups that were ranked among Google’s most effective teams, for instance, were composed of friends who socialized outside work. Others were made up of people who were basically strangers away from the conference room. Some groups sought strong managers. Others preferred a less hierarchical structure. Most confounding of all, two teams might have nearly identical makeups, with overlapping memberships, but radically different levels of effectiveness. ‘‘At Google, we’re good at finding patterns,’’ Dubey said. ‘‘There weren’t strong patterns here.’’
After analyzing over one hundred groups for over a year, Project Aristotle researchers concluded that understanding and influencing a groups norms was the key to improvement.
The researchers concluded that what separateded the “good” teams from the “bad” ones was how teammates related to each other. Even though the array of team members from successful group to successful group varied, these successful groups appeared to share two behaviors:
The technology industry is one of the fastest growing parts of our economy. It is also becoming the world’s dominant commericial culture. Working in groups and teams is fast becoming the rule. In the best teams, members listen to one another and show sensitivity to feelings and needs.
REST stands for REpresentational State Transfer. I wasn’t entirely certain what I was distilling from the article “How I explained REST to my brother”. I pidked up a little bit about how machines ‘talk’ and using nouns and verbs. I grasped the concept, but not with high clarity.
Because I was still curious, I went in search of a little more on REST on my own. I found a few things while I was searching. However, this video I found by *WebConcepts and watched for 8-9 minutes was pretty cool. I was able to grasp things a bit more by watching it. Even though it’s a touch outdated, it worked for me, but results may vary….