Becoming a Googler!

This week I became a Googler! Or, more precisely, a Noogler (New Googler in the company jargon). As many of you know, I recently terminated my employment with Vocollect in order to start working for Google. As an aside, I should mention a notable difference between the Israeli high-tech market and the American one. While in Israel leaving a company gets you many "you traitor!"-like responses, the basic attitude in the US is that people normally move on after some time. For the most part, the response I got at Vocollect was "Congratulations!", which is a tribute to the company and my past colleagues there.

Anyway, I spent my first week at Google's headquarters in Mountain View, California. And what a fascinating week it was! I assume each and every one of you has heard of Google, though I'm not sure how familiar you are with the details. Google was and is growing at an astounding pace. Not even a decade since it was founded, the company has well over 10,000 employees and is considered one of the major players in the technology industry. In each of the past 2 quarters Google recruited more than 1500(!) Nooglers, bringing the rate to well over a hundred new employees per week. And the week I joined was no different from any other. On the down side, it almost felt like enlisting in the army again. On the up side, the luxurious "service" conditions more than made up for it ;-)

Google is considered by many the best employer in the US, in terms of employee satisfaction. I can fully understand why after a week in the Googleplex. The Mountain View campus is ENORMOUS! It's comprised of numerous not-very-tall-but-fairly-fancy buildings, and spans a huge area. To allow easy transportation between buildings if one prefers not to walk, there are free bikes and scooters all over the place. Equipment such as laptops and desktops is top of the line. Generally speaking, the attitude is that as an employee you can have whatever will make you happier and more productive, and then some. In Mountain View, the company provides day-care for employees' kids, on-site doctors, massages, free laundry and more. But the most notable perk has to do with food. All employees have a constant free supply of food. The campus hosts more than 10 gourmet restaurants, and you can dine free of charge – breakfast, lunch and dinner. That easily explains the "Google 15" rule, according to which a Noogler gains 15 pounds (circa 7 kg) within a short amount of time. I must say that I was quite overwhelmed by this wealth, and made a big effort to beat the statistics. Not sure if I succeeded...

In terms of organizational behavior and culture, Google is like nothing else. It'd be fair to say that it's a big corporation that sticks to its start-up mentality. And don't get me wrong, I'm all for it. It's just highly unusual. One central characteristic is the striking difference between the secrecy outwards and the total openness internally. Once you've passed the recruiting process and joined the company, pretty much everything is at your fingertips (the main exception is information about users, for privacy reasons). The level of access to information is really overwhelming, and my main task in the first few weeks will be to start digesting the relevant information and more importantly learning to ignore or defer irrelevant information. It is no secret that this is not one of my strengths, but I'll have to learn. I simply have no choice, and I hope that working in the much-smaller Pittsburgh office will also make it somewhat easier.

Technologically, there is so much going on, and so much cutting-edge fascinating technology being developed inside Google. In some unexplainable way, despite the somewhat chaotic feeling, the resulting technology and innovations are jaw-dropping. And even more importantly, I'm going to be surrounded by many brilliant engineers, from whom I can learn so much from. Heaven! So, I truly hope that the coming months will live up to my expectations. I'll conclude here, as I'm on board an airplane, and the battery in my shiny new Mac laptop is running low. By the way, this trip was my first kidless flight in more than 4 years! A refreshing change by itself...

Hugs and kisses,
Giora

PS: To avoid total lack of new updates about the girls, I'll simply substitute the verbal blabbing with a Picasa link, where you can find numerous photos, including recent ones: http://picasaweb.google.com/AnatGiora