Almost since the day it set up shop in a garage, Google has been known as one of the world's best places to work -- if you could get your foot in the door. Crazy-free perks were the reward for graduates of elite schools who had high grade-point averages and who could endure the company's grueling interview process. The perks remain, but as Google (GOOG) has grown, it has gotten more realistic about recruiting -- and kinder about tolerating underperformers. As of last year, the company began recruiting at such nonpedigreed institutions as Texas A&M and the State University of New York at Buffalo; interview sessions that often involved as many as 12 screenings now average between four and five. In an exclusive interview with Fortune, Larry Page, Google's original CEO, who reassumed the position a year ago, speaks with obvious pride about the "family" environment Google tries to encourage, how it differs from his own grandfather's workplace, and how free food encourages people to eat less. And while he doesn't rule out charging for those meals one day, don't count on its happening anytime soon.
How has the state of being an employee at Google changed over the years?
It changes, obviously, as the company gets bigger. But the thing that really has stuck with me from when I was at Stanford is that when you're a grad student, you can work on whatever you want. And the projects that were really good got a lot of people really wanting to work on them. We've taken that learning to Google, and it's been really, really helpful. If you're changing the world, you're working on important things. You're excited to get up in the morning. That's the main thing. You want to be working on meaningful, impactful projects, and that's the thing there is really a shortage of in the world. I think at Google we still have that. We've always had that in spades.
How do you summarize Google's culture?
My grandfather was an autoworker, and I have a weapon he manufactured to protect himself from the company that he would carry to work. It's a big iron pipe with a hunk of lead on the head. I think about how far we've come as companies from those days, where workers had to protect themselves from the company. My job as a leader is to make sure everybody in the company has great opportunities, and that they feel they're having a meaningful impact and are contributing to the good of society. As a world, we're doing a better job of that. My goal is for Google to lead, not follow that.
How important to you are Google's wonderful lifestyle perks, from the free food to the massages, for the employee experience you're trying to design?
I don't think it's any of those individual things. It's important that the company be a family, that people feel that they're part of the company, and that the company is like a family to them. When you treat people that way, you get better productivity. Rather than really caring what hours you worked, you care about output. We should continue to innovate in our relationship with our employees and figure out the best things we can do for them. We've been looking a lot at the health of our people, and making sure we're helping them stay healthy and quit smoking. Our health care costs have grown a lot less fast than other companies as a result of that. But our people have also been a lot happier and more productive, which is much more important.
