I’m Feeling Lucky

After joining Google as its 59th employee and first director of marketing and brand management, Douglas Edwards recounts how it felt to work inside the company during its start-up years. He describes endless days fueled by free food, constant debates driven by data, and fierce hockey games. Larry Page and Sergey Brin set up a famously nonhierarchical structure, pushed against conventional wisdom and raced to add new features while quietly burying ideas that failed. Edwards conveys the mix of camaraderie and competition among the early staff and the culture they created for themselves as Google grew into one of the best-known brands in the world. The memoir came out in 2011.

Seth Godin put it on his fall 2011 reading list, saying he could not stop thinking about its candid account of being a follower inside a company full of leaders.