But today wasn't about visiting any of them...sorry folks if you're on of my Postini friends. I'll hook up with you next time I visit Google Giew (I mean Mountain View). I knew it was going to be an interesting visit when my 3G iPhone picked up the Google network about a mile away from their HQ while i was driving north on 101.
Upon reaching the lobby you first notice a random scrolling of projected words on the wall. Come to find out it's a real-time stream of searches on the Google site. Filtered of course, but entertaining to see. My guest ushered me in and took me upstairs. We soon made it to the break room as I needed a coffee fix.
Talk about being overwhelmed! You name it, this break room had it. Ok, maybe Aunt Jemima wasn't cooking up pancakes (at least not in this building), but Juan Valdez and his coffee-carrying mule were in full effect. Too many choices...next thing I know my host hands me a freshly made latte. Time flies when you try to take it all in. Nice to see the tasty beverage in my hand.
We head back to his office, I crack open the laptop and hop onto the guest network and get some work done. Next up, lunch! Hmm, a recurring theme is happening and it's all about food and beverages (do they have a scotch bar there too?!?).
The plan was to hit up two cafes. At the first I load up on different types of sushi and plenty of wasabi. Gotta say they know how to do this cuisine. Next up was the sandwich deli. Kudos there too.
And like a visit to any place where there are a ton of people milling about (shopping malls, athletic events, etc.), I was probably bound to run into somebody I knew. Come to find out I ran into an old acquaintance from back in my Stanford days...and now she's married to a guy I actually have raced with/against on the Los Gatos team. Small world indeed.
Up next will be a return visit to conquer more of the cafes. Two down, seventeen more to go!
Holy crap. It IS a small world. When did you work at Postini? Because I work for them, ahem, well, Google now. What dept. were you in?
ReplyDeleteAnd yeah, the Google cafe experience is overwhelming, and fattening. They used to bring us cookies every day at 3, and thank God they discontinued that service. I'm one of few who won't miss it one bit.
I was in the IT group working specifically on the Oracle applications from March 2004 thru May 2005.
ReplyDeleteHmm. I started in April of 2005. Were you in the funky Veteran's Bldg (or the Marine Pkwy bldg)? I'm in QA, and admittedly, I was a bit overwhelmed my first few months there. There are days I'm still overwhelmed, now it's because Google does something that breaks our test and production clusters. FRUSTRATING!
ReplyDeleteI'm still trying the shed the pounds I gained at my last visit there...and that was 2 years ago! I remember consuming an entire plate of olives from their schmancy olive bar.
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