Day 4 (9/5) - Google (Part 2)
We then got to ask Prakash some questions.
When Picasa was bought out he had to go through 6 interviews before joining Google and they were very intense. During them he was asked very technical questions so he couldn't BS.
Microsoft is more conventional. Although great people work there, Google's more cutting edge while MS just improves on ideas stolen from elsewhere. Yahoo innovates too, hurr hurr.
Google is very end user oriented. At meetings they think not about the bottom line but about the end user.
I asked if their 'Don't be evil' motto had ever been violated, either on a personal or corporate level and he said that although it was a cheesy and cliched line, it was true, though it was becoming hard to continue following it as the company grew (they have 15,000 staff now - 12,000 on that site and 3,000 internationally; 3 years ago they had 1500 staff only).
Almost no one wears suits or some such to work after the first three months. Every day is casual friday - jeans and t-shirt are the uniform. Though departments facing outwards like PR and marketing need to be more formal.
There is no adherence to the "spend 20% of your time working on other projects" rule, but people can take 2 years off to do stuff. They can also go for public speaking lessons etc worth $5000/year as long as they get a B average and above.
Some people bring their whole family to lunch/dinner daily. Tsk. Otherwise, leading by example and culture mostly orks.
People are rarely fired. One guy used up maybe 3,000 chances before he got fired. Another blogged private company information privately and so was let go.
To stop people running off to begin their own startups, employees are encouraged to innovate under the umbrella of Google and get a huge share of the revenue if it succeeds (eg 60%).
A big reason why they can afford to have such a relaxed corporate culture is because they're doing very well financially.
There is not much monitoring, unless you're in product management which is very intense. Culture is very important as a method of employee motivation.
When the company was smaller the founders used to introduce new people to everyone each Friday. They can't do that now with 300 hires a week. Though you can still get a direct email response from a founder within one day.
Current staff get to interview prospective hires, because they're going to work with them in the future.
Google has no gift shop. How sad.
We got the male half of one of the ubiquitous Asian-White couples to take a group picture for us (he took a picture of his girl on our camera before taking us, hurr hurr). I wonder if someone has done a sociological study of this phenomenon.
Sample lunch menu: Tomato-Basil Soup with Roasted Fennel, Lemon-Herb King Salmon Roulade, Braised Artichokes, Black Quinoa-Dill Sweet Potato Cakes, Spring Baby Greens Salad, Pecan Pie with Cacao and Hawaii Dates
Someone throwing a boomerang
This is the first time I've seen a boomerang work - I haven't seen one work in Singapore yet. It's either the wind, or the curse of these waters.
We then went back to Palo Alto.
Cheesecake Factory exterior.
Cakes
At Borders, under the 'Science Questions Answered' section, they had crap. 'The Politically Incorrect Guide to Science' listed one science 'myth' 'busted' as being about Evolution. Another was about Global Warming. Also in the series was 'The Politically Incorrect Guide to Darwinism and Intelligent Design', with a ringing endorsement: "Annoy a godless liberal: buy this book! - Ann Coulter". On both, there was a logo of a pig, proof of their Islamophobia!
Borders also has a "Dummy's guide to Chinese" which had not a single Chinese character inside. Hurr hurr.
We finally went back to Krung Siam, the Thai restaurant which was closed the previous day.
At the Thai restaurant
They had interesting food, like "Gang Kouw Supparod", translated as "One Man and One Girl Curry" (wth). They also had good Tom Yum soup which was not hot at all despite the red specks floating in it; short of making my own, there is no way of getting this in Singapore.
Everyone was into sharing food, but the manager demanded an order of 3 items for 5 people. Intimidated by the many signs reading "we reserve the right to refuse service to anyone", aside from the Tom Yum soup and the Pad Thai we ordered Soft Shell Crab. It was really amazing - we only got 4 pieces of crab (one crab sliced in four), and a lot of battered and deep fried vegetables: broccoli, carrots, corn and snow peas. Eee.
I wanted to convene a pow-wow that night after people came back from watching Macbeth (we went the next day) but I went to sleep, being fatigued and of course no one came since I wasn't awake to chase them down. Gah.
Quotes:
Can you don't walk so fast? We're in California. (not)