The world of Google is rapidly becoming the Legend of Silicon Valley.

A friend of mine is working there, and offered to show me around. I’d heard it was cool, but it blew my mind, just a little. For all of your benefits I will try to describe it although knowing where to start is tricky in itself.

Google feels like a massive social experiment on how to keep people happy, motivated, creative, hardworking, and loyal to their company.  If you have ever thought ‘wouldn’t it be great if they had this at work…’? then Google is that place. There are piano rooms, masseurs, Nintendos, napping rooms, large quantities of (complimentary) gourmet food on tap, snack points, the list goes on and on.  Silicon folklore has it, that there may even be a staircase with a slide for coming down. They have created a workplace that you don’t want to leave, or need to leave. Everything is at work.

And that is where the genius lies. Whilst waiting to be taken inside (my friend is still busy at 9pm) I see the laundry room.  A guy is sitting there, going through some work while he’s waiting for his clothes to be cleaned.  With no obstructions of hunger, hygene or boredom, people could stay here 24/7.

The Googleplex resembles a large University Campus, decorated with enormous sculptures of cream cakes, sea-voyagers and a few other random artifacts. On the walls there are adverts about various learning opportunities, demonstrations, clubs and societies, plays. This is the most amazing part. They make sure that you keep learning and developing your mind, which in turn attracts people who want to keep having ideas.

The architecture is very open, with most walls being glass and all offices open plan. The walls have collages, photos, digital art that employees have created in their 20% projects. Wherever you go you  see stacks of unlocked bikes just sitting near the entrances,(all decorated in Google colours of course) to speed you up on the long distances between buildings.

As far as my internship goes, I’m making headway on my project. I’m beginning to see the scope of the data and I’m getting better at using the software every day. My mentor’s also given me a new project to work on, which is essentially a piece of detective work on one of their devices. It may well lead me down to the company labs which is cool because I’ll get to see a different side of the company.

Time management here is a big deal. Everyone’s got to prioritise their projects and figure out how much of their day to allocate to each one; a very different set up to other places where I’ve worked which operate on timed work and strict deadlines.

I’m really enjoying reading what you’re all getting upto.

Have a great week everyone

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