Slip Slidin' Away
Have you hit ALL of your KPIs this quarter?
Transcript
Performance Reviewer: Hiya Stan, thanks for coming in today. We’ll go ahead and get started with your performance review. So on each of the role-specific KPIs, it looks like you’ve either met or exceeded the level of expectation.
Stan: Oh. Great.
Performance Review: On here, you’re managers noted that you never missed a deadline, that all of your work had a fastidious quality to it, and that you helped pick-up the slack whenever your co-workers went on vacation. Overall, spectacular marks on your role-specific KPIs. However, that's only part of the review process. Here at Google, we give equal weight to both our role-specific KPIs and our office culture KPIs. And it's here that all the trouble begins, now doesn’t it, Stan? Do you know what each employee’s indoor slide time allotment is?
Stan: What? I don’t know. Is it like... five minutes a month?
Performance Reviewer: No. It’s actually no less than fifteen minutes a day, Stan. And, based on the our bio-tracking sensor data, how many minutes of sanctioned slide time do you think you used this past quarter?
Stan: I… I don’t know, like three?
Performance Reviewer: It was actually Zero, Stan. You spent zero minutes on any of our slides. Meanwhile, the average Google employee spent well over 15 hours sliding around this quarter.
Stan: Look I mean, I was pretty busy. I had like four different projects going on simultaneously. I just didn’t think...
Performance Reviewer: We don’t really care what the excuse is. Because it’s clear—you’re not going to help build Google culture are you, Stan? You’re just not a team player. Which is why we are going to have to let you go. Security will escort you to your desk, where you’ll collect all your things, and exit the building by no later than 12:30… Oh yeah, and Stan, when you leave today, instead of the stairs, why don’t you take the slide down? Thanks.
Background:
In high school, I remember hearing that Google built playground slides inside its offices. My initial thought was, “Wow, what a cool place to work.” But, now after several years of an office job—not at Google, by any stretch of the imagination—my sentiments about office-playgrounds have changed slightly.
