A couple of weeks ago I was fortunate enough to spend 7 days being dazzled by the bright lights of New York City. In between eating hamburgers the size of your head, learning the less than straight forward subway system, and slowly cooking in the 35 degree heat, I was able to squeeze in a brief visit to the Google offices. Now, I am not sure you can just turn up at Google, knock on the door and wander in, it’s probably a bit more complicated than that, but due to my girlfriend’s brother being gainfully employed by the internet behemoth, I was allowed to be a brief, but very impressed, guest.
The building was fairly dignified, without any over the top trumpeting about the big G being in residence, no flashing HD video screens announced that it was present, we are still some way off of Bladerunner it seems. The registration process to enter was fairly relaxed but emphasised that security was definitely taking place, as we submitted to being photographed and signed in, as far as I am aware they did not take any DNA for provision to PRISM, but who knows… After a short wait our host arrived and whisked us off into the cavernous confines of #76, 9th Avenue. Google only occupy a couple of floors of this enormous site, but that appears to be plenty. We were guided up through an area where employees children can lounge around, write on the walls and play with lego, and then into the main office itself. Everything was very spacious and bright, mostly in open plan with only a few specific offices laid out. It was at this point that we got to see first-hand just how nice Google is to employees, and the fairly informal basis on which teams worked together. Everyone was friendly and laid back. It seemed a bit quiet though. It was about lunch time and our host started to lead us up to the canteen. On the way through we saw that employees had free reign to decorate their work areas, and that there were special rooms where people could take a break. People would wander up and say hi and be delightfully polite. There was a top quality collection of board games dotted around, seemingly for people to just grab and play when not fixing bugs in the latest version of Google Docs. Heaven!
And then we arrived in the canteen. It was quite the thing, a vast arena with hordes of cooks and serving staff, open plan and with several types of cuisine on offer, from the IT nerd friendly cheese burger or pizza slice to the Japanese cuisine there to suit those sophisticated New Yorkers with more complex palates. I had a cheese burger. All the food was free, and the room was bursting, I suppose that was why it was so quiet downstairs. We sat with a few employees and learned a little about how life was at Google. After lunch our time was drawing to a close and we were showed a few other rooms, including a library with a quiet room hidden behind a bookshelf that you had to rotate to get access to, and some bizarre themed meeting rooms, one featuring a bath full of foam toys. No water though. Perhaps some of this was a bit over the top and, frankly, loopy, but plenty of it was endearing and you could certainly see why people are falling over themselves to work there.
And so we descended in the lift and wandered out into the noisy real world again, with exploring to do. Well worth the visit!
Andy Malcolm is a Level 2 Service Desk Professional at Breakwater IT. Breakwater provide IT Support, IT Consultancy and Business Telecoms Solutions to the East Anglia region.
Call now on 01603 709300
