Shortly after I joined Google, Larry Page told me about a time when he’d **had a boss who was suspicious of ambition**. While on a summer internship, Larry had been given an assignment that would have taken him a couple of days if he’d been given the freedom to do it his way. He explained the advantages of his approach to the boss, but the boss would have none of it: **he insisted that Larry do it “the way they’d always done it.”** Instead of two days, Larry was forced to spend all summer working on the project. The wasted time and effort were pure torture for him. As most of us have, Larry discovered that a boss who held him back could make life miserable. “Three months of my life wasted and gone forever. I never want anyone at Google to have a boss like that. Ever,” Larry told me once, and I saw he meant it by the way he led at Google. Larry went to great lengths to make sure bosses couldn’t squash their employees’ ideas and ambitions. I loved that about Google. --- **Tags** — [[quotes]], [[management]], [[culture]], [[innovation]] **Source** — [[202303281533 - B - Radical Candor]]