weleh.. ngiler jg nih.. ;) Sent from Mr.Incredible On Nov 10, 2011 2:11 PM, "Erwin Fransiscus" <[email protected]> wrote:
> sorry klo repost..dapat kiriman dr teman, buat baca2 aja > > -- > Sincerely yours, > @ErwinFransiscus > > sent from NexusHD2 2.3.7 > ---------- Forwarded message ----- > https://plus.google.com/110569673423509816572/post/N7evqCpeimN > > I've tried writing another Amazon War Story a couple of times, but so far > no luck. It's not Writer's Block. I can write plenty. This time my problem > is Writer's Crap. So today I'll try something different, and write about > working at Google. > > The main problem with writing about Google is that nobody will believe you. > > My friend +Dominic Cooney and I were talking about it one time. I told him > I felt this secret guilt every time I went to work, because everyone was so > smart and they treat you so well. I told him I truly felt like I didn't > deserve it. > > Dominic said he knew what I meant, and that every day at Google he felt > like he'd won the lottery. > > It's crazy. This guy is hands-down one of the smartest people I've ever > worked with in my life, and he told me that working at Google felt like > winning the lottery. How many of you can honestly say that about your job? > I mean, sure, Amazon felt like that to me sometimes, but it was more like > Shirley Jackson's lottery. > > I've been wanting to write up how it really is here, but it's too much. > It's like trying to introduce you to warm chocolate cake by forcing you to > swim through a lake of it. I remember once my brother Dave and I bought the > biggest pieces of chocolate we could find in Ghirardelli's Square in San > Francisco, and we ate chocolate until we couldn't choke any more down. The > next morning I woke up to Dave waving a hunk of chocolate in front of my > nose, saying: "Want some choooooocolate?" and I almost puked. > > It's kind of like that. My challenge is to find a way to describe Google > to you without making you puke. > > Speaking of Ghirardelli's Square, my Amazon pager went off while I was > there once, on vacation, and I had to dial in to a conference call about a > site outage while I was eating my ice cream. My challenge with Amazon is > finding a way to describe it without making me puke. But I'll figure > something out, eventually. In many ways they're a world-class operation -- > primarily in ways that matter to their customers; employees, not so much. > But I guess in the end it's the customers that matter. > > Anyway, until I figure that one out, I guess I'll write about Google. > > Google has offices all over the world, dozens of them, and I've only been > to a few. So I'll tell you about Google Kirkland, where I work. It's a > pretty average office in terms of size, location and perks. But it's what I > know best. > > Here's what it's like in Google Kirkland. At least, here's a little piece > of it, on a little plate with a white napkin and a silver fork. Enjoy. > > Food > > At Google there's a lot of food. Everyone at other companies just shrugs > it off as "free food", which is sort of like shrugging off Google's giant > yearly bonuses as "occasional tips". In our three little buildings here we > have three cafeterias, at least six or eight kitchen areas filled with free > snacks, two espresso cafes staffed with barristas, a 1950s-style dessert > bar, a frozen yogurt machine with a self-serve toppings bar, probably a > dozen fridges filled with free drinks, a weekly Farmer's Market all summer > where you can take home huge bags of locally-grown veggies, and every > Friday afternoon, long tables of themed hors d'oeuvres and beer and wine > while we watch TGIF. Am I forgetting anything? I'm sure I am. > > And the food is good. One of our chefs was the Executive Chef at the Earth > and Ocean restaurant in the W hotel in downtown Seattle, and the other one > had equally impressive credentials. The cafe in my building, Sudo Cafe, has > a DIY burger bar, daily entree selections, a pizza bar, a sandwich bar and > panini press, a rotisserie, a salad bar, a fruit bar, two daily soup > selections, a vegetarian and vegan selection, and random bowls of fruit and > cakes and all sorts of other stuff lying around to tempt you. To me it > feels like Ofelia's second task in Pan's Labyrinth, except look ma, no > monster. > > There are three meals a day, five days a week, all you can eat for free. > You can even bring guests to lunch. The salad and sandwich and espresso > bars stay open between meals, and the micro-kitchens are open 24x7. And for > those who wonder whether it's OK to take some food home once in a while, > there are take-out containers sitting right next to the plates. > > Amusingly, every other Google office I've ever been to had better food > than we do. The old NYC office had an olive bar that was longer than the > one at Whole Foods. The Seattle office has microbrews on tap. The Mountain > View main campus has more than forty cafes and restaurants. Kirkland's food > has been catching up fast in the past year or two, but the bar is insanely > high. > > Why all the free gourmet food? I don't know. Maybe they're planning to > cook us and eat us. That's the most plausible explanation we've been able > to think of. That, and the fact that we're never tempted to leave the > campus at lunchtime or afternoon-tea time, so we all wind up working at > least an extra half an hour a day. But that can't possibly be a sufficient > return on investment for Google, not by a long shot. > > I think the real explanation is that they do it because that's part of how > you create an environment that attracts the smartest people in the world. > I'm not in that category, but for a while I was gunning for fattest person > in the world, so they managed to attract me too. > > Facilities > > There's free underground parking, but there aren't quite enough spots. So > they have a free valet service. The valets park your car and bring your > keys up to your office later in the day. (Amazon never had free parking. As > far as I know, they still don't.) > > The decor at Google is colorful and makes the whole place feel more fun. I > know it doesn't seem like a big deal. Who cares about the decor, right? But > I've worked in typical cube-farm companies, and there's something magical > about Google's decor. I've been to Microsoft a few times, too. Their decor > is opulent and fancy, like going to the Waldorf-Astoria hotel. Google's > decor is more like walking into an FAO Schwarz toy store. > > The cafe in our newest building has a nautical theme. It has hardwood > floors the color of a boat deck, and big rope spools turned sideways into > tables, and portholes that look through a hallway decorated with ship-deck > furniture onto a huge wall mural of downtown Seattle. Oh, and there are > boats. I gave my brother Mike and his friend Jay a tour of the place over > the weekend, and Jay was trying really hard not to be impressed. He started > to crack when he saw the gym, but it was the boats that finally got him. > > "How did they get them IN here?" was Mike's question. Mike's got his own > construction company and has worked with heavy equipment, and all he could > do was marvel at these big frigging boats on the second floor. They're > these, I dunno, roofed gondola-looking boats with leather bench-seats. > They're there so you can have an impromptu meeting on a boat, or work on > your laptop on a boat, or just hang out on a boat and have some espresso > and soak up that nice boat feeling, I guess. > > Downstairs one of the video-conference rooms has comfy leather chairs and > wall-to-wall murals of farmland scenery, and a stable with a bunch of hay > and a couple of horses. Yep, you heard that right. They startle the crap > out of people the first time they go in there. Couple o' great big stuffed > horses like you might find at, say, FAO Schwarz. > > I mean, don't get me wrong here. Amazon had some decor too. And by "some > decor", I mean a Cave Bear. One day a Cave Bear skeleton showed up, > standing a good ten or twelve feet high, complete with an > anatomically-correct dick-bone attached to its pelvic region with a movable > steel wire. It became a sort of ad-hoc weathervane for employee morale. > > Just as with the food, I could go on for chapters about the facilities and > probably never finish, because they keep adding new stuff. There's a > climbing wall, and pool tables, and foosball tables, and a bunch of $5000 > fancy massage chairs with incomprehensible Japanese instructions. Man they > feel nice though. There's a super nice 24-hour gym, and lush real plants > everywhere, and a doctor's office with a full-time Google doctor, and a > haircut place where the Corporate Cuts lady comes by a few times a week. > > Oh, and there's a massage salon with three or four licensed massage > therapists. That's a Google tradition. Ours is subsidized down to > practically no cost for an hour-long table massage. And there are prayer > rooms, and a basketball court, and a dog park with Google-colored fire > hydrants to pee on, and breast-feeding rooms for new moms, and electric-car > spots, and a red British phone booth that I assume is for changing into > superhero costumes, and gigantic oversized lava lamps, and comfy couches > around roaring fireplaces, and a photo booth, and a bike cage with a tool > bench and an air compressor, and hammocks and bean-bag chairs, and a > room-length shuffleboard table, and three or four game rooms with air > hockey and ping-pong and XBoxes and Wiis and arcade games with thousands of > titles, and on and ON and ON. > > I mean, damn. You thought I was exaggerating when I told you nobody would > believe me, didn't you? > > And sadly I can't even tell you about the two new coolest things they're > opening here, because they won't officially launch until next week. But > it's always like that. I've been putting this post off for years because > there's always some new thing in the works that I want to wait for before I > tell you about it all. > > Amazing True Story: One day I started getting jealous of this digital > piano that people were playing every day. So I sent a nice email to someone > in facilities asking if there was any chance we might be able to get a > guitar. She said it sounded like a good idea and she promised to look into > it. > > A month went by, and I started to get a little sad, because I thought they > were just not interested. But I sent her a little email and asked if there > was any update. Just hoping, you know, against hope. > > She told me: "Oh yeah, I'm sorry -- I forgot to tell you. We talked it > over with the directors, and we all decided the best thing to do was to > build a music studio." > > So now we have Soundgarden over in Building A. It has two rooms: one with > soundproofing and two electric guitars and a bass and a keyboard and a drum > set and a jam hub and amps and all kinds of other crap that I can't > identify except to say that it's really popular. The other room has a > ukulele and some sort of musical drum and a jazz guitar and some other > classical instruments. > > Remember back in the first paragraph of my infamous rant, where I made the > bizarre claim that "Amazon does everything wrong, and Google does > everything right?" It's a pretty complex claim to try to explain, but I > feel like the "Ask for a guitar, get a music studio" story is one of the > best metaphors for how the two companies operate. At Google, when they're > faced with any kind of problem at all -- anything -- they step back and > ask: "What is the first-class way to solve it?" Whereas at Amazon, I > wouldn't even have been able to ask the question, because there's nobody to > ask. Amazon's facilities team is tiny, and they spend all their time trying > to solve the problem of squeezing more employees into less space. > > Events > > Google has twelve paid holidays a year in the US. In contrast, Amazon had > five, at least when I was there. At Google we get two days at Christmas, > two at New Year's, two at Thanksgiving, and then six others. Pretty nice. > > Every year we have a company morale trip. One year they put us up for the > night at the Whistler ski resort, including a fancy bus ride there and > back, a fancy hotel room, free rental equipment and lift tickets, free > lessons if we wanted them, and of course a massive party with a live band > and giant dinner and open bar and a chocolate fountain and mechanical bull > and whatnot. You know, the usual. > > Actually +Adam de Boor tells me I missed some stuff. He went dogsledding, > and you could alternately go snowmobiling or get spa treatments or choose > some other options we've both forgotten now. Psh. That was so last year. > > This year we had two trips -- you could pick whichever one you liked > better. Half of us went skiing overnight and the other half went to Vegas. > I went skiing, but I heard Vegas was pretty awesome. As you might expect. > > But regardless of which trip you picked, everyone got to go to a Vegas > "practice night" a few weeks before the trip. They set up a casino in the > cafeteria, catered by some local company that provides tables and dealers. > The dealers gave lessons to anyone who wanted to learn to play craps or > poker or blackjack or roulette. Craps is frigging complicated, so I went > and played poker until I was too drunk to see my cards anymore, and went > and crashed on a couch upstairs. I do remember at one point some guy pushed > all his chips at me and left, even though he hadn't lost or anything. I > didn't even see who it was, but if it was you -- thanks! > > The morale trip for every Google office is different, and usually > different each year. One year down in Mountain View they took everyone > skiing in Lake Tahoe. Another year they rented out Disneyland. > > Every December we have a huge holiday party. Everyone dresses up (well, > it's Seattle, so it's not that dressy). They do the casino thing there too, > and you get a thousand "dollars" of fake money in chips that you can spend > at the casino, with the overall winner getting an iPad or some such. The > holiday parties are my favorite. You bring your S.O. and get your pic taken > with Santa. And they bring arcade games and golf cages and table games and > sometimes even those big outdoor inflatable carnival games, except they're > indoors and you compete on them while you're hammered. > > Last year was the best one yet -- they rented out the Experience Music > Project and Pacific Science Center in downtown Seattle, and threw the party > there. It was amazing. > > We just had our yearly Halloween party. There were like 300 kids there, > all going through this elaborate scary haunted-house setup in one of the > auditorium rooms, and then going office-to-office to trick-or-treat. The > whole campus was decorated with Halloween decor -- spiders and cobwebs and > stuff that you see all year round at some companies. It was nice. > > Every summer we have a company picnic, and you can bring your whole > family. Last summer they had hiking and golf and horseback riding and > rafting and carnival games and rides and huge outdoor barbecues and who > knows what else. They pretty much had me at "golf", so I didn't pay much > attention to the other attractions. > > Every single week Google has TGIF, where Larry and Sergey and various VPs > go up on stage and give a report on the exciting stuff that's happened in > the past week, and then field questions from Googlers. There is a site > where you can submit questions for that week's TGIF, and vote questions up > or down. So by the time TGIF rolls around, the top questions are the really > burning ones that everyone wants answered. And you can ask about anything. > They even take live questions from an open mic in the audience. And there's > always beer and wine, so the live questions tend to be rather pointed and > direct, at least when they're intelligible. > > Contrast that with Amazon, where they have something similar, but > it'squarterly, and you have to write your questions down on index cards > that are then vetted by some secret cabal who chooses which questions are > suitable for Jeff Bezos to answer. > > In addition to our yearly morale offsite, and the holiday party, and the > halloween party, and the summer picnic, and the weekly TGIF, and any other > regularly-scheduled parties I've overlooked, Google also has random other > parties and offsites all the time. We all go bowling every now and then, > and they take us all to movie premieres when something extra cool comes out > (anything from Harry Potter to An Inconvenient Truth), and we sometimes > just go down to the lake and have a catered lunch at the pavilion when the > weather is nice. > > We also have guest lecturers, and performances from bands, and seemingly > random other "stuff". You can never predict what it will be. Sometimes we > get fancy gifts for no apparent reason. Last year we all got "Fireswords", > which are these insanely bright $400 flashlights that we had to sign > waivers for because they can actually blind you, presumably in an attempt > to generate more grass-roots interest in Accessibility. Another time they > gave us all Earthquake Preparedness Backpacks, which are these black packs > that weigh about a thousand pounds. I have no idea what's in mine, but it > feels heavy enough to keep the building from moving during an earthquake. > > Every year they give us a holiday bonus and a holiday gift. A couple years > in a row we got Android phones. I'm still using my latest one. I don't > think there's any guarantee that we'll get a holiday gift every year, but > so far they've seen fit to give us all gifts, and I don't hear anyone > complaining. > > At Amazon they were always terrified that they'd create a sense of > entitlement, so they never gave us anything. They went to great lengths to > avoid instilling a sense of entitlement in the employees, and they often > talked about this philosophy publicly. > > Google handles the entitlement problem by not giving a shit. They just > keep on throwing stuff at us: gifts and perks and activities and facilities > and benefits and vacations and lord knows what else. And guess what? There > is almost no sense of entitlement here. When it does come up, Googlers > self-police: they'll publicly ridicule anyone who complains that the > brownies aren't sweet enough, or whatever. > > The only people who I think don't really "get" it, who don't realize just > how different Google is from the Real World, are college hires who've never > worked anywhere else. I always tell people we should have a "slap an > intern" program, just to give them a little taste of what working at other > places is like. I feel kind of bad for them, should they ever have the > misfortune to go work somewhere else. It will be quite a shock for them. > > Wrap-Up > > Like I said: this could be a book. I haven't even begun to talk about the > amazing equipment we get. Or the incredible travel policies. Or how easy it > is to request special software or hardware or ergonomic equipment. Or the > astounding lengths they'll go to in supporting employees with disabilities. > Or the peer-committee promotion process. Or the software engineering > culture. Or any of the gazillion other amazing things about this place. > > Like I said: it's too much. And half of you probably wouldn't believe me > anyway. I sure as hell didn't believe my recruiter when she was telling me > about this place seven years ago. > > Are there downsides? Sure. A few. The food can make you fat. The > environment can make you spoiled. The smart people around you can give you > Degree Envy. Some people don't do well with the lack of structure, since > it's geared towards self-motivated people who figure out what to work on. > You can even wind up on a project that's got a little too much heat on it, > and be briefly miserable -- but compared to daily life at most companies, > that misery is pretty well soaked in sugar frosting. > > I hope this puts a little more context around some of the things I've said > about Amazon, though. I would guess that Amazon is in the bottom half of > the industry in terms of being a nice place to work -- but not in the > bottom 25%. I've seen much worse than Amazon. Heck, pre-2000 Amazon was > much worse than today-Amazon. Overall I'd say that today they're probably > just a little below the average, industry-wide. > > So comparing Amazon to Google is a little unfair, because > comparinganyone to Google is unfair. Google's undoubtedly in the top 0.1% > of the best places to work in the world, across anything even remotely > computer-related. > > Hopefully it helps you understand a little better where I was coming from. > I didn't really use the right wording before, when I said that Google does > everything "right". It's more accurate to say they do everythingawesome. > > Is this stuff worth writing a book about? You tell me! > > [Thanks to my friend +Adam de Boor for reviewing and improving this post, > and also for reviewing its awful predecessor that thankfully I didn't > publish.] > > Collapse this post > > -- > "Indonesian Android Community" Join: http://forum.android.or.id > > =============== > Download Aplikasi Kompas versi Digital dan Keren > https://market.android.com/details?id=com.kompas.android.kec > --------------------- > Gunakan Paket Unlimited Data XL Mobile Broadband > http://www.xl.co.id/XLInternet/BroadbandInternet > -------------------- > PING'S Mobile - Plaza Semanggi > E-mail: [email protected] Ph. 021-25536796 > -------------------- > i-gadget Store - BEC Bandung > E-mail: [email protected] Ph. 0812-21111191 > -------------------- > Toko EceranShop - BEC Bandung > E-mail: [email protected] Ph. 0815-56599888 > =============== > > Aturan Jualan dan Kloteran ID-Android http://goo.gl/YBN21 > -- "Indonesian Android Community" Join: http://forum.android.or.id =============== Download Aplikasi Kompas versi Digital dan Keren https://market.android.com/details?id=com.kompas.android.kec --------------------- Gunakan Paket Unlimited Data XL Mobile Broadband http://www.xl.co.id/XLInternet/BroadbandInternet -------------------- PING'S Mobile - Plaza Semanggi E-mail: [email protected] Ph. 021-25536796 -------------------- i-gadget Store - BEC Bandung E-mail: [email protected] Ph. 0812-21111191 -------------------- Toko EceranShop - BEC Bandung E-mail: [email protected] Ph. 0815-56599888 =============== Aturan Jualan dan Kloteran ID-Android http://goo.gl/YBN21
