• Fortune, Tuesday, October 4, 2011 11:36 AM

Remember that girl in grade school who always insisted she'd flunked the last exam -- until, without fail, the teacher would return her perfect grade. What ever happened to her? She turned into Marissa Mayer, Google's VP of location and local services, who tells Fortune that, in her heart of hearts, she believed Google had a 98% chance of failing when she joined to company in 1999.

Sure, 2% odds of success were far greater than what she bet on other start-ups at the time, but come on! Mayer was also drawn to Google for the fact that she would be the first female engineer among a team of eight, as opposed to being the first female among 48 engineers at a different start-up. "The jeers she received when she visited that office were enough to turn her off," Fortune writes. Now, Mayer, who joined Google when it had just 20 employees, helps run the technology giant, and its roughly 29,000 employees.

Along with scoring Mayer early on, what has made Google a success? Forward-thinking policies like its 20% rule, which encourages employees to spend 20% of their time developing new ideas, Mayer says, noting that about half of Google product launches originate during that 20% time.

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