Lawrence Edward Page, better known as Larry Page, is one of the co-founders of American tech giant Google, along with Sergey Brin. In 2015, the company was reorganized, with Alphabet Inc. as the parent company.
Page served as CEO of Google from 1997 till 2001 when he was succeeded by Eric Schmidt, and then again from April 2011 until July 2015 during the transition to Alphabet Inc. He was succeeded by Sundar Pichai in August 2015.
Today, Page is the second richest person in the world, after Tesla and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk. He has moved away from the spotlight since stepping down as Google’s CEO but remains an influential figure for many investors and tech enthusiasts.
Here’s we look at a quote from Larry Page and examine what he meant to convey.
Quote of the day by Larry Page
“Don’t hire anyone you wouldn’t want to work for.”
What does Larry Page’s quote mean?
The quote was part of Page’s talk at his alma mater Stanford University in 2002. During his active leadership at the company, Page was known to be involved in every hiring decision at Google. Have the right people, even if it means hiring less, was Page’s guiding mantra.
In 2015, when the company had 53,600 full-time employees, Business Insider cited then HR boss Laszlo Bock’s book ‘Work Rules!’ to report that Page had approved each appointment himself. In 2011 too, he told Wired in an interview that he developed Google’s hiring system because he wants the company “to feel true” to his vision amid expansive growth.
In earlier interviews too, Page said he wanted “fantastic people” who didn’t need to be micro-managed and while the company at the time (around 2015), didn’t have many managers as needed, “we would rather have too few than too many”.
And that’s the crux of Page’s statement. He believes that each member of a team contributes to the vision, goals and overall environment and eschews traditional manager roles. Thus, if you can’t work for someone, you can’t work with them.
Who is Larry Page? About the Google cofounder, net worth, education
Born on 26 March 1973 in Lansing, Michigan, Page is the son of Dr Carl Victor Page, a science professor at the Michigan State University, and followed in his father’s footsteps with an honors graduate from the school. He also earned a Bachelor of Science degree in engineering, with a concentration on computer engineering from the same school.
While in the Ph.D. program in computer science at Stanford University in 1995, Larry met Brin and together they developed and ran Google, which began operating in 1998 after securing $1,00,000 from investor Andy Bechtolsheim. He holds a Master of Science from Stanford University. He later hired Eric Schmidt as CEO of the iconic tech company.
Even after stepping down as CEO, Page remains a board member and controlling shareholder (6% through Class B and C shares) of Alphabet, which controls Android, Gmail, and video sharing service YouTube.
According to the Forbes index and Bloomberg Billionaire’s Index (BBI), the 52-year-old is the second richest man in the world, after Musk. Forbes pegs his net worth at $255 billion, while BBI estimates it at $267 billion, as on date.
