At VeriFone It's a Dog's Life (And They Love It!)

People assume we've got these great screening techniques. Believe me, we don't. We've got this naive belief that if you have a fundamental set of values, and if you treat people with dignity, by and large you attract the right people. By the way, more than half our people work outside the United States. And even within the United States, our people come from different backgrounds, different industries, different ethnic origins. We have a global, multifaceted population. But we approach recruiting -- whether it's in San Francisco or Santiago, Chile -- the same way everywhere.

But how do you let people know what they're in for?

When we bring people in for interviews, we go out of our way to emphasize the negative. We don't sweet-talk them. We make it clear, for example, that whether they want to admit it or not, most people are more comfortable operating under a well-defined framework. People will tell you, "I love to set my own hours." But most people are happier when you tell them to be in by 8:00 in the morning and leave at 5:00 in the afternoon.

We are also very clear about the quid pro quo of life at VeriFone. The quid pro quo, in return for all the freedom we offer, is a tremendous emphasis on accountability. We expect you to perform and we expect you to deliver the goods. I don't care if you don't come to the office or if you take long lunch breaks. We don't have any system for lunch breaks. It's bullshit. You perform, you can do anything you want. You don't perform, you're out. A lot of people are very uncertain of themselves. So we make that clear.

We're also clear about how we work. It takes some getting used to. Many times, I'll see people six months after they join the company, and they'll tell me, "I feel like I'm a slave to e-mail." All I can say is, "What the hell do you want me to do about it? Run your life? If you choose to make yourself a slave to e-mail, be my guest. This is not Big Brother. You want freedom, you exercise it."

Doesn't that scare off 90% of the people you recruit?

Without any doubt, there are people who hear our message and say, "This is not for me." Fine. And there are people who start with us and do not fit the mold. That's fine too. But I'll tell you this: we have been able to attract people who, at face value, would appear to be total misfits, people who come from very large companies, and it's amazing how comfortable they get with our way of working. And I'll tell you something else: we don't lose people.

You see, in addition to being a really tough, results-oriented culture, we are also a culture of caring. We do things for our people that most companies don't even think of doing. I'm not talking about grand gestures. I'm talking about the day-to-day realities: being generous with acknowledgment, always making people feel important, always communicating. More than anything else, these informal methods of recognition are what stick. A private, one-on-one e-mail. A private telephone call. The spirit that creates is incredible.

I certainly see the culture of toughness and personal freedom. I'm not sure I see the culture of caring.

One of the things we preach very strongly is quality of life. The way we look at quality of life is, at one level, very pragmatic and, at another level, very emotional. The pragmatic level is to articulate clearly that we are a public company, registered in Delaware, with all the expectations that entails. We will produce results and we will produce results quarterly. Otherwise life is going to be very short and very uninteresting. I make no bones about it.

At another level we are, in fact extremely soft. We are constantly searching for ways to create a degree of empathy in the VeriFone family. Whether people are single or married, whether they have children or they're living with their parents -- unless their personal support system is excited about VeriFone, unless they feel a part of VeriFone, then VeriFone will fail.

Let me give you an example of something we're just putting into place It's called VeriKid. We're going to sponsor an exchange program so that VeriFone children can live with VeriFone families in different parts of the world. Is this very profound? No, but how many companies do it? And it's going to be powerful. Let's say we have a family in Bad Homburg, Germany, where one of our regional offices is, and they have a 14-year-old girl who has never been to America, and she wants to come live in San Francisco for a while. We sponsor her to stay with a VeriFone family here. You can't tell me that family in San Francisco is not going to be very close to the couple in Germany. We're constantly searching for ways to bring the VeriFone family closer together.