Mohamed al-Ballaa was in his fifties, but he had the energy of a man in his twenties. He enjoyed taking calculated risks and venturing into areas where others would seldom go. He often told me that the rapidly evolving world around us makes it difficult to formulate five-year and ten-year plans, especially in a tech-related industry. As an investor, al-Ballaa committed his capital to dozens of ventures at once, a spray-and-pray strategy, hoping that just one would strike gold and make up for losses in the other investments. This made a profound impression on me.
The Internet has been instrumental in shaping my experiences as well as my character. It was through the Internet that I was able to enter the world of communications (when I was barely eighteen) and network with hundreds of young people from my generation everywhere around the world. Like everyone else, I enjoyed spending long hours in front of a screen on chat programs. I built a network of virtual relations with people, most of whom I never met in person, not even once.
I find virtual life in cyberspace quite appealing. I prefer it to being visible in public life. It is quite convenient to conceal your identity and write whatever you please in whatever way you choose. You can even choose whom to speak to and to end the conversation at any moment you like. I am not a “people person” in the typical sense, meaning that I’d rather communicate with people online than spend a lot of time visiting them or going out to places in a group. I much prefer using e-mail to using the telephone. In short, I am a real-life introvert yet an Internet extrovert.
My addiction to the Internet made joining Google a dream that I fervently aspired to make a reality. I had heard a lot about how cool it was to work there. The company’s founders, Sergey Brin and Larry Page, became among the most influential people in the world after they developed the web’s best search engine. Employees at Google are among the happiest in the world. Their intellectual skills are respected and their innovation is appreciated. For years I persistently applied online every time there was a vacancy that matched my experience. I used to joke with my wife and friends by saying, “I want to work at Google even if I have to take a job as a tea boy.”
One of those attempts was in 2005, only a few weeks after I joined NTG. Google announced a vacancy for a consultant in the Middle East and North Africa. Without hesitation, at barely twenty-five years old, I applied. My résumé was designed to demonstrate immediately that I was crazy about the Internet.
I had doubts about getting this position, because of my age and lack of experience. The job was to develop the company’s strategy for the entire Middle East. Yet to my surprise, I received a call from Human Resources inviting me to start the interview process.
Google is unique in everything it does. Human Resources sent me some documents to read before the interviews. The entire process took a few short months. The last, and ninth, interview was with a vice president, who spoke to me from his office in London. He asked about my experience in mergers and acquisitions along with my web experience, and about my understanding of regional web issues. Although I knew that I certainly was underexperienced, I was still hopeful, because I felt that my character and Google were “plug ’n’ play.” This is why I was devastated when, two weeks later, I found out that I had not been selected. My wife was dumbfounded and could not understand why I didn’t get the job.
My desire to join Google only intensified. It was no longer a matter of employment; it was a challenge, and I was stubborn. I particularly did not want to fail at joining a company that I thought embodied who I was as a person.
In 2008 the company announced an opening for a regional head of marketing, to be based at its one-year-old branch in Cairo. It was the perfect chance, now that I had my MBA in marketing and the Mubasher experience. Of course I applied. I volunteered a study, on my own initiative, in which I explained my vision of what the company’s strategy in the region should be. My observations included technical notes on the search engine’s performance in Arabic. Then a series of interviews began: I met with seven interviewers from different countries and functions. I thought I did very well in most of the conversations. My last interview was with the VP of marketing. I still remember my answer to her question “Why do you want to join Google?”: “I want to be actively engaged in changing our region. I believe that the Internet is going to help make that happen, and working for Google is the best way for me to have a role.”
After eight months of interviews, I received an offer — I had made it to Google! I was later told by my manager that one of the senior Googlers who interviewed me described me in his evaluation sheet as “persistent and stubborn, just the type a company needs when entering a new market.”
My skills and experience were enriched by Google. And I marveled at its culture, which was all about listening to others. Data and statistics ruled over opinions. Most of the time, authority belongs to the owners of information, or as W. Edwards Deming once said, “In God we trust; all others must bring data.”
Similarly impressive is the trust Google bestowed on employees, who were empowered to access a lot of internal information that other companies would normally restrict to smaller numbers of employees. Communication and sharing knowledge among employees was key to the company’s success.
Google did not rise to the peak of the tech industry by luck. Its success is all based on strategy and philosophy. Attention goes not only to employees but also to users. The company listens to its users, asks their opinions, analyzes their usage behavior, and uses this input to develop its products. Teams within the company are constantly changing and developing products using unique and innovative product development methods.
The culture of experimentation was another thing I loved about the company. An experiment is always welcome, so long as the results come quickly. In a case where there is a difference of opinion about features of a product undergoing development, the product managers and engineers will put a beta version out to a group of users. The decision will then be based on the results and feedback. Google is not afraid of failure. Failure is accepted. If a product fails, it is terminated. Simple.
What attracted me most was Google’s 20 percent rule. The company allows employees to work on whatever they please for 20 percent of their time (one day a week). This means that they are free to work on projects other than their official assignments if they want. The idea is based on the notion that people work best when they work on things they are passionate about. A host of Google’s most outstanding products were born out of the 20 percent rule, including the e-mail service, Gmail, and the largest online advertising management network, Adsense. For me, Google helped reinforce the idea that employee engagement is the most important strategy of all. The more you can get everyone involved in trying to solve your problems, the more successful you will be. I found it natural, a few years later, to apply this philosophy to political and social activism.
A year before I finally joined Google, when I sat across the desk from Captain Rafaat of State Security, he asked me many questions about my religious faith and practice but none about my Internet experience. After a few hours of interrogation, during which he found nothing to hold against me, the State Security officer seemingly decided that I was not a threat in any way to security or to the political status quo. He said that he would try to remove my name from the airport arrivals watch list after presenting a report to his superiors. I thanked him and departed, grateful that this strange day had come to a peaceful end.
If Captain Rafaat and his colleagues had spent more time thinking about the Internet than classifying Egyptians by type of religious belief, they might have been better prepared for the digital tsunami under way.
2
Searching for a Savior
I’M NOT INTO POLITICS.” I used to say this all the time, reflexively, whenever the subject came up. It was a popular stance, shared by most Egyptians. It was the result of a deeply rooted culture of fear. Anyone who dared meddle in politics, in opposition to the ruling National Democratic Party (NDP), took a risk, with little hope of reaping any return.