Google Labs’ ‘secret society’ way of thanking its most valuable employees

• Google Labs leaders use ominous meeting invites to surprise and thank top staff.
• It’s a “secret society” ritual for the most valuable employees, Google Labs chief Josh Woodward said.
• Woodward called the meetings “pretty fun” during an appearance on “Lenny’s Podcast.”

An unexpected meeting invite with the boss is often the kind of thing that sends employees spiraling. For Google Labs staffers, though, it could mean top brass are about to tell you how great you are.

Speaking on a recent episode of “Lenny’s Podcast,” Josh Woodward, the vice president of Google Labs, the Gemini app, and AI Studio, described the surprise appreciation meetings as a kind of “secret society” ritual for the team’s most valuable employees.

“We’ll basically like put an invite on someone’s calendar, and we’ll just, you know, it looks kind of scary because there’s like four or five leaders on the team,” Woodward told podcast host Lenny Rachitsky, adding that there’s no agenda given.

“And then they show up, and we take turns. We go around the circle, and we just tell them why we appreciate them so much for being on the team,” Woodward said.

Woodward called the sessions “pretty fun” and said employees are regularly surprised to learn what the meetings are about.

“I always start the meeting with like, ‘This is not a bad meeting. This is a good meeting,'” he said. “Your mind may assume the worst, but we’re actually doing the opposite. These are some of the most valuable people.”

The surprise recognition meetings are one of the ways Google Labs celebrates the often unflashy work behind its AI products, according to Woodward.

He said the team also has a tradition of handing out quirky awards to employees.

There’s the “TPU harvester” award, which consists of a “little miniature rake” from Etsy as well as a cash reward, for staffers who optimize Google’s AI chips, known as Tensor Processing Units, Woodward said.

“A few of us wanted to figure out a way to reward people who do the grungy work of efficiency and reclaiming TPUs, harvesting TPUs, so we can build the next features and fuel our growth,” he said, adding, “we kind of turned it into this big celebration.”

Employees who fix small product flaws or “paper cuts” receive a golden Band-Aid, Woodward said. And those who find surprising ways to push AI models toward new capabilities can become an “LLM whisperer,” earning them a giant set of ears and a “really nice” mechanical keyboard.

“We’re trying to find like ways to kind of like I don’t know encode the value in these like dorky symbols, but that means something,” he said, explaining, “We’re always coming up with weird stuff like this.”