Recommendations you can check.
by Steven Levy, 2011
Who uses, recommends or left In the Plex: How Google Thinks, Works, and Shapes Our Lives, in their own words: each a verbatim quote with a link to where it was said.
2 people
I learned a great deal from this book about Google, which put some of my own experiences with Google products in context.
Gwern's compiled star-rated reviews of books he has read since ~1997 (page last modified 2022-10-13).
2022-10-13·gwern.net ↗
Levy was given unprecedented access to Google, and the result is what I consider to be an accurate depiction of how the company operates. A good overview of how Google product managers work.
From “Best Books for Product Managers [2026]”, his standing list, introduced as “the 44 books I’d consider essential to any PM’s bookshelf”. Every book links through amzn.to and a Bookshop.org affiliate id (/a/83161/).
2026-01-07·bringthedonuts.com ↗
Every entry is a verbatim quote and a link to the public post it came from. Nothing is paraphrased. If it is not on record somewhere public, it is not here.
The verdict is what they actually said: loved and liked are explicit; recommended means they told others to get it; uses means they only say they use it; read is a book on their public shelf with no verdict; mixed and disliked are kept too.
A dashed affiliate link, sponsored or their own label means the post disclosed a relationship. It is shown, never hidden.
The shading behind a date shows how dated a recommendation is for its kind of thing.
The shading behind a date shows how dated a recommendation is, for its kind of thing. Fully green is recent. It drains a quarter at a time as the post gets older, and is empty once it reads as dated.
What counts as old depends on the thing. A laptop praised four years ago has been replaced twice; a book loved twenty years ago is probably still loved. The shading is gone after about:
Stripes mean the post carries no date and the date shown is an estimate. No date at all, no shading.