One chapter ends, another begins: First impressions of Google

Almost three weeks ago I wrapped up my work with the Northwest School's coaching gig, travelled around the country to visit friends and family (in New Hampshire, Ithaca, St. Louis, and Los Angeles) and now I find myself in Silicon Valley at Google's headquarters for orientation.

For the most part, my first impressions of the people and the facilities here match their reputation: the people friendly, smiling, and chatting eagerly in the cafeteria. Dogs at campus. The area beautiful. Tons of internal information easily searchable. Outstanding variety and quality of food. Equipment ready for you on your first day. (I already have my laptop setup on VPN and on the corporate wifi).

There were only a couple of things that I didn't expect:

1. The number of people at work late (until 8 p.m.). Which makes some sense, since dinner is served from 6:30-8:00 p.m.
2. Heated toilet seats (which were quite delightful).
3. Watching a live interview and concert by One Republic at lunch. That was really pretty fun!

And there were a couple of things I was disappointed by:

1. Completely unripe kiwi fruit (sad face) in the cafeteria.
2. Having to walk to a few different buildings to find a community bike (GBike) that was functional. I found one with a flat tire, but didn't know where to find a pump.
3. Getting a "rental bike" for "visitors" (i.e. Googlers who live at a different location, like myself) that didn't have lights on it.*

A friend asked me today how Google and Microsoft compare, and some obvious differences are these:

• Much longer orientation at Google (5-10 days vs. 1)
• Better food at Google
• Better drinks at Google. (In my time on campus today I consumed 2 Odwallas, a frappucino, and another juice).
• More bikes at Google: I saw a good number parked outside and inside buildings. Unlike Microsoft, there are bike racks in front of buildings at Google, which makes biking a little more convenient and "advertises" that biking is a viable option. Also, Microsoft doesn't have any loaner bikes or "community" bikes like Google does.
• Less of a corporate atmosphere at Google
• Smaller campus at Google (7000 in Mountain View, compared to 40,000 MS employees in the Puget Sound area)
• Much easier to find internal information at Google
• Most (80%?) of Google employees seem to have been here 3 years or less.
• People seem happier at Google (I'm not really sure if this is true or not...)
• Variety of operating systems at Google (Mac OS, Linux, Windows, whereas most machines are running Windows at Microsoft).

One perhaps disturbing similarity between Microsoft and Google is that at both places time can certainly fly by. I was there until almost 9 p.m. tonight, for a total of 13 hours of time on and around Google today!

On the whole, the Silicon Valley area has impressed me and been nicer than expected: San Jose seems to have a pleasant downtown (as does Mountain View), the hills of Rancho San Antonio were quite deluxe for trail running yesterday (they seem a bit too civilized to those of us used to running through mud, roots, and vegetation in western Washington!), Santa Cruz was fun to drive to and a fun little seaside town, and there seem to be a good number of trails right behind Google itself in Mountain View. And yes, there are plenty of mountain views in Mountain View. And although I saw (from a distance) some traffic this morning at 8 a.m., outside of rush hour, the traffic appears to be minimal... especially when compared with what I saw two days ago in L.A.!

* Apparently their policy is that you can go buy a bike light at a bike shop and submit an expense report for it. This is a silly policy for several reasons. Firstly, if I'm visiting an area, I probably don't know where the nearest bike shop is. Secondly, it will probably be dark after work when I'm looking for said bike shop. Thirdly, it's required by law to have both front and rear lights on the bike while riding in the dark.