Here is my third — and probably final — installment in the series of posts I’ve been writing about my transition to West Coast life. Retroactive thanks for allowing me to hijack this space to map out my thoughts on this huge life overhaul. I hope you’ve found the posts entertaining, and possibly useful in your own life changes. Please bear with me as I seek to rediscover my niche on Tropophilia in light of my new job!
I’ve been in California for almost two weeks now, and think I’ll have trouble ever letting myself leave. The weather here has been nothing short of spectacular. I’m not sure I’ve seen a cloud since I’ve been here. The mornings and evenings are much cooler than I expected, but the lack of humidity is a blessing that I cannot fully express. The people here are very nice, too. It’s not the sugary Southern brand of nice — it’s a very transparent, laid-back kindness and empathy. But sometimes I miss the sugary Southern brand.
Today, though, I want to talk about the place where I’ve been spending most of my time: Google. I wish I could tell you everything. Unfortunately, though, there are things I just am not allowed to share. :-( So forgive me in advance if I skip around some things or sound really vague.
Google is definitely the fun house that the media portrays it to be. There is a stocked mini kitchen about 30 feet from my desk. We have a ping pong table, pool table, massage chair, and massage room in our building. There’s a room where you can pick up whatever kind of computer hardware you need — all new in original packaging so you get the pleasure of unboxing :) — just by swiping your badge. There are departmental and company-wide happy hours and off-sites. One of Google’s eighteen cafés is also in our building, serving hot and fresh breakfasts, lunches, and dinners — all for free. And that’s just our building. In other buildings (short rides away on one of the scores of community bikes) there are nap pods, gyms, ball pits, slides, and other as-yet undiscovered shenanigans.
We. are. spoiled. But believe it or not, people do work here, and they work really hard.
So, how to describe my job? Well, it is a lot bigger than I expected, but that’s actually a great thing. To put it simply, my job is to assist the Product Counsel team manage the legal side of developing, approving, launching, and monitoring new and existing Google products. Each of the lawyers has a portfolio of products that they “own.” Products are developed by teams, and so the lawyers are like mini General Counsels for different product teams. I do have some day-to-day (well… more like week-to-week) recurring duties, but a lot of my time is spent with special or long-term, ongoing projects. I still don’t fully have my head wrapped around my job, but I am (oddly) already feeling very comfortable. I haven’t felt overwhelmed yet, though I’m sure it will come. My strategy has been this: take one e-mail at a time, never be afraid to ask questions, and breathe.
The difference between this and my last job is like night and day. At Google, I am given enormous responsibilities and independence. The only clerical work I’ve had to do so far is scheduling meetings between attorneys and their product teams, and that’s only because the regular administrative assistant is on vacation. There will be some times when I’ll spend a few days in a spreadsheet or document, but the majority of my time will be spent meeting with people, whether in person or by videoconference, to make the legal side of product development and management smoother and, in the end, better.
One nice thing about Google is, despite its now-massive size, it still tries to act like a start-up. Got an idea? Implement it. Something’s broken? Fix it yourself. There is a great confidence in the ability of Googlers to be self-sufficient, despite the coddling effect of all the perks and benefits. The management structure is amazingly flat, so much so that the best ideas bubble up rather than drop down. That’s the philosophy behind the 20% time given to engineers to work on independent projects outside their normal purview.
There are, believe it or not, a few downsides I’ve discovered with this job. The first is that I’ve won the golden ticket to my Wonka factory. The fascination and excitement about the things that Google has done, is doing, and plans to do are still there, but the mystery is largely gone. I know the secrets. Heck, it’s my job to know the secrets and help coordinate their eventual unveiling. It’s almost disappointing, having spent years reading speculation and analysis about Google’s plans and ultimate direction. Now I’m on the inside. As I’ve tried to explain to some of my friends, it’s like knowing who’s going to win the World Series before the season even starts. You still love the sport, but the mystery is gone.
Related to that, it’s also strange to have made my primary obsession hobby into a job. I’m working in a field that I love, but it also has put a strange twist on my leisure time. What do I write about on Tropophilia now? I’m no longer an observer in my favorite pastime… I’m a participant! That colors how I view events and opinions. Will I be able to keep an open and inquisitive mind about the greater technology industry and the debates that surround it? Or will my mind be so exhausted from battling in those trenches for eight hours a day that my leisurely inquisitiveness on the subject will suffer?
Final downside: I have my dream job at age 23. Unless I come back to Google down the road as an attorney… I think all other jobs are downhill from here. Yikes.
Image used under a Creative Commons license courtesy of Flickr user, and apparently fellow Googler, mburns.
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J-Rod, envy is the green-eyed monster that would kick you in the tuchus for being a tsucheppenish if you weren’t so far away. Hopefully you can make “the Google” do everything John McCain thinks it does.
Jarred, I just want to say that I am excited for you and your move. As a once-upon-a-time West Coast-er (okay, so I moved when I was 3, but it counts for something), I do think that it’s a pretty sweet place, and I’m glad you’ll get a chance to experience it! The other thing I will say is that as difficult as it can be to move to a place where you don’t have a ton of (or any) connections, I think there’s something kind of empowering about it. For me, at least, it was neat to know that whatever my life became in this new place, it became that way because that was how I wanted it to be.
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