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Back to Why every company now needs to think and operate like a lab team | Josh Woodward (Google Labs, Gemini, AI Studio), with Josh Woodward.

Why Does Google Labs Hand Out Miniature Rakes?

Josh Woodward gives Google Labs teammates a little miniature rake and a cash reward when they do the grungy work of reclaiming TPUs.

Google Labs products are growing and need more and more TPUs. A few people wanted a way to reward efficiency: reclaiming TPUs and harvesting TPUs so the team can build the next features and fuel growth. The rake is a miniature one made on Etsy. The award has turned into a big celebration for people who save TPUs and optimize. It is not for people who use the most tokens. People who use the most tokens are talked to separately.

A second award covers people who go in and fix paper cuts. Paper cuts are the little things that add up in a product and annoy people. For that work, the team made a golden Band-Aid and gives it out.

Grokipedia·Google Labs·Josh Woodward

Transcript

Why every company now needs to think and operate like a lab team | Josh Woodward (Google Labs, Gemini, AI Studio) ·

Lenny's Podcast: Product | Career | Growth

More from this episode

  1. Where Do Google's Best Ideas Come From?Josh Woodward says the best ideas to come out of labs, and out of Google more broadly, arrive from a variety of places.
  2. What Is Google Labs' Almost Possible Framework?Josh Woodward says Google Labs keeps a list of what is almost possible and watches for the moment an experience crosses into something a team can build.
  3. How Do You Spot Product-market Fit Early?Josh Woodward spots early product-market fit by watching people's eyes, because the early read is way more art than science.
  4. When Should You Kill a Product Idea?Josh Woodward kills a product idea when the team already knows it is failing, usually before the leader does.
  5. What Skills Are Rising in Value in the AI Era?Josh Woodward looks for mispriced signals in the people around him, past the usual talk of taste, judgment, and vibe coding.
  6. Should Every Employee Become a Builder?Josh Woodward says people are overhyping the idea that everybody is a builder and that the new job is all the same.
  7. Why Does Every Company Need a Frontier Team?Josh Woodward says every company needs a set of people whose job is the frontier.
  8. How Do You Set Up an Internal Labs Team?Josh Woodward gives three tips for anyone setting up an internal labs team.
  9. Will Google Have 10,000 Products or Five?Josh Woodward keeps switching his answer in a long-running debate with Logan Kilpatrick about whether Google will have 10,000 products or five in five years.

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