Thanks for being an intern: Here's your $4,000 bonus!

I had decided awhile ago I wasn't going to write this post. I think the idea can come off a bit pompous... so I will attempt to be completely transparent here: my intention is to playfully speculate at the a dollar amount representing the ridiculous perks I have been privileged to enjoy this summer. The value, however, is noisy for two reasons, 1) I have not included every single perk I've been part of, and 2) I am generally guessing at the value of benefits which I don't fully understand (imagine an extreme version of the Price is Right, where estimation skills are tested beyond the grocery-store-level!).

If you're reading this to learn about Google salaries, feel free to stop reading. You won't find any details around that topic here. Okay, let's move onto finding a price to describe "ridiculous"!

You may ask what spurred me to change my mind and actually write this post? Yesterday, Google topped itself in a way didn't even think possible. I was told to arrive at work at 5AM. The day essentially boiled down to a one-day, insanely fun, round-trip airplane ticket trip to an off-site location. (The vague description is intentional, as I don't want to spoil the surprise for future APM interns who will search the web in hopes of discovering the day's agenda!). I began to realize, "Wow, how much is Google 'paying' me extra to fund all of these outrageous activities?" And since I am an engineer also love numbers, I decided to go through the exercise and attempt to get an actual dollar estimate.

As I compiled this magical value, here are the kinds of free perks I was assigning values and adding up:

• paid while attending secret APM off-site, as described above
• free breakfast ($4), lunch ($5), and dinner ($5), 5 days a week, all organic, hormone-free meats, better-than-most-restaurants quality ... for 12 weeks. Not to mention all of the wine tasting events during afternoons on the patio and regular beer/wine/appetizer Friday afternoon parties.
• 2-3 cups of coffee a day; around 3 smoothies a week
• free tickets to see the musical Wicked in downtown San Francisco
• use of free Google rental car service on 3 occasions
• not paying for gas all summer by commuting 2-hours via shuttle
• free 8 week hip-hop dance classes, 4 weeks of Bollywood dance classes 
• Kayaking off-site with sea creatures in Pacific
• one visit to free on-site Google doctors
• 10 loads of free on-site laundry/detergent/etc.
• ...and many more...

After creating (fairly conservative) estimates and a little math...POOF! It would appear that I'm getting about an extra $4,000 in perks for 3 months of work -- this number blows my mind! I'll be the first to admit that interns get spoiled more than full-time employees...but still, $4000!? As a college student, I tend to understand the magnitude or wow-factor of a number by comparing it to how many Chipotle burritos it's worth (for example, when considering whether or not to go to a movie, I might ask myself, "Is it really worth 1.5 Chipotle burritos, Katie?"). That game here is laughable: it's as though Google has awarded me 500 of the tastiest burritos on the planet! I am one, happy college student.

Strolling Sundays in San Francisco Sity

"Sity!? Ugh!" I can hear all of my obsessive-compulsive friends cringing at the misspelling. Generally I would be convulsing over the choice as well, but perhaps because I had such a lovely weekend (or because engineering has finally managed to stamp out all grammar/literacy from my brain) ...it simply doesn't bother me at all. A lazy Sunday spent wandering the city has put me in an exceptionally good mood -- okay, okay: it may also be the inordinately large chocolate sundae I just consumed in Ghiradelli Square!

Stinking Rose review: if you love garlic, you won't go home upset. We got the pork ribs and gnocchi, which were both wonderful. They had a garlic ice cream dessert, which the skeptic in me couldn't quite order -- however, if anyone ends up going there, I'm curious to hear what you thought!

We also hit the Cobb's Comedy Club this past Friday. My review for this place is a thumbs-up for the club setting, atmosphere, and openers...and an extremely awkward turtle for the headliner. I'm sure he's regularly quite funny, but we found ourselves laughing most because the show was so unexpectedly lame. I kept thinking someone from Candid Camera was going to jump out and say, "Gotcha!" At least my friends made it fun, and we all had a good laugh about it afterwards.

Ok, enough blogging for now. Back to playing in the "sity." (Really, it's ok. Breathe. And eat a chocolate sundae. Or two.)

Wait, most hip-hop dance classes don't involve flow charts...?

I work on the main campus at Google, known generally as the Googleplex. Join me on my trip to a set of buildings slightly off the main campus, affectionately called the "Honeyplex."

It occurred to me that I have been fairly deliberate about obfuscating a lot of my actual work activities from this blog. It seems like the majority of people who stumble upon this blog aren't going to be as interested in my day-to-day tasks which include events like: creating designs and human-interaction models for web products (e.g. suppose you were given the task to design the colors, buttons, user-flow, etc for a new online movie-watching application), dreaming up huge lists of features we could make and then prioritizing which ones actually get built, meeting with engineers for debugging code and playing with (or breaking!) demos ... and hundreds of other things. It's hard to describe concretely, in that the APM role at Google requires the enthusiasm to tackle a bunch of roles at once and create the perfect storm among your team to deliver awe-inspiring products. I can assure you that this lofty goal isn't accomplished by doing a standard set of daily tasks, and most days I am still discovering the subtleties of the role from observing those around me.


Also today at Google (and ironically related to a "bee"): Alex Trebek from Jeopardy! visited to host a geography bee among Googlers.

Sunsets in Sausalito

In many ways, the best view of San Francisco does not exist anywhere in the city. Drive north through the city, cross the Golden Gate Bridge, and you will yourself right next to the quiet and beautiful town of Sausalito. After having dinner at a delectable, historic restaurant called the Alamo Square Grill (if you go, I highly recommend ordering the daily prix fixe!), I jumped in a car with some friends and headed north:

San Francisco sunsets are more fickle than the sensational sunsets of my past two summers spent in Seattle and San Diego. While I could almost guarantee a breathtaking sunset over the water in the other locations, the fog that tends to descend on San Francisco in the evening. Thus, each clear sunset feels extra special this summer.

Hmm...I'm too sick to stay at home today

Here's a new (fake) term to add to your vocabulary: half-sick. This is not the kind of sickness that requires a doctor's visit to sort out. It's not the sort of debilitating cold which requires an extra box of tissues as your new favorite side-kick.  It's also not the fake "sick" that people pretend to be when they're sneezing more than usual or have a caffeine headache. No -- half-sick is that odd gray area where you could arguably take the day off work to stay at home or, conversely, go into work and deal with it. I've been half sick for 4 days now.

The recipe for half-sick is fairly simple: (move to SF) + (surround yourself with amazing people you can't get enough of) + (plan on dancing and yelling, a lot) + (a 2-hour daily commute to Mountain View) - (sleep) = inevitable half-sickness.

Even after 4 days of half-sickness, I repeated the vicious pattern last night. I met an old friend from Colorado at 9:45pm in the Haight-Ashbury area to grab drinks and catch up. He has just finished his first year of med school at UCSF and promptly diagnosed me as the all-to-common half-sick I have described. As we chatted more, it occurred to me that during this half-sick phase, I have never once even considered the possibility of taking a sick day from work. Even in my beautiful home in San Francisco, cuddled in bed looking out the Victorian windows, I think I could heal much better while...yeah, at Google. Think about it! There's no strictly enforced dress code, so sweatpants for a day would work. I've been drinking grapefruit juice all week, as well as eating a multitude of fruits and vegetables at all meals. I've used the nap pods at work this week. Twice. The only thing I'm not doing right is modifying my sleep routine in the evenings! And the incentives continue: Google has doctors on campus which will see all employees for free and give basic medical treatment like illness diagnosis, injury treatment, travel consultations, vaccinations, etc. If I can't kick this cold by Monday, I think I'll be stopping by the Wellness Center!

I can hear the angry HR emails filling my inbox already, so let's be clear: I don't think Google is advocating that sick people come into work and spread the illness...but they sure do create a tempting environment to recover!

At Google, everyone gets FREE CARS!

....okay, okay -- the title is an embellishment of the real perk. Here's a quick look into a car-sharing program I used last week at work:

And let's not forget about the many other ways to get around the Google campus efficiently! Hundreds of bikes litter the entrances to buildings, all designed with that quirky Google attitude we've come to love. I have heard rumors of segways as well, but I haven't snagged a ride just yet.  My friend Alex and I took a bike tour around campus on Friday. Here we are styling the bikes (before she got pulled over by a cop for riding on the sidewalk, haha!). 

The irony? Notice anything missing? Google helmets, anyone? Apparently our employee brains are precious enough to nurture using tech-talks, exorbitant amounts of food, and challenging problems...but not precious enough to enforce a helmet rule!  

Google Kittens: Being a Stray Never Looked So Good

I admit it: I am getting used to the over-the-top nature of life at Google. This morning I took a video conference with Zurich while eating breakfast: vanilla chai and  9-grain organic oatmeal with strawberries and honey. I did about an hour of UI design while sitting in one of the many free massage chairs. What can I say: life is good at Google. And yet some things still surprise me...

I was walking through main campus back to my office this afternoon, when I found my gaze drifting over to the large collection of bushes and shrubs to my left. I blinked. No, not an illusion: there were Googlers standing in bushes at various points as if looking for something. So naturally, I decided to join. I learned that they were attempting to catch the stray Google kittens that frequent the campus. A woman was straddling a cardboard box with a encased kitten settled snugly in the corner. But don't be fooled by the domestic appearance (see the well-practiced-innocent-kitten-face below); a hand near the box opening results in 10 new scratch marks!

Why so many kittens on campus, you may ask? The logic to me is actually fairly simple: mix an excess of free food (including steaks, chicken, fish, you name it!) and a bunch of suckers for adorable kitten faces...bam! KITTEN COLONY! Today's progress includes two kittens now safely in a shelter waiting to move into a good home. Two down...hundreds to go?

This past weekend was a four-day weekend (thank you, Google, for an extra day off!). The best way to describe my 4th of July weekend is wonderfully tiring: went hiking to waterfalls north of Santa Cruz, went dancing for hours in the famed Castro district downtown, watched fireworks on top of 15-story building overlooking the San Francisco bay, played in parks and visited farmer's markets across the city, and spent a day at the Great America theme park for free (thanks again, Google). Suddenly, being a Google kitten doesn't sound as awesome, huh? Love my life.

"The Stars" Love Google: 2 Concerts, 2 Days

Famous people! Movie stars! Doors magically open at their feet. If they want to open a restaurant in downtown Manhattan, they can! If they want to buy thirty new cars and park them along their 30 foot driveway, they can! If they want a VIP visit and tour of the Google campus, they can?

Oh, yes. They can. And they do.

Why not visit the campus? Admittedly, I think Google holds a certain amount of intrigue for many people. This week, Google welcomed Michael Franti, a brilliant (and humble) songwriter, to the stage in a free concert for all employees.  I happened to attend two concerts within two days. A window into the fun:

In the video above, I mentioned that Michael Franti asked everyone to post anything and everything they captured on the internet -- it's free advertising, after all! After the concert, a number of employees hung around to chat and take pictures with him. This reminded me one man who has a unique twenty-percent-time project at Google -- tangent: all Google engineers are encouraged to work on any project that strikes their fancy 20% of their work hours (a day or so each week). Many famous ideas of come from this, including Gmail, Google News, and even the Google shuttles I recently told you about! -- While many projects are engineering related, there have been some funny ones too. One of my favorites is the person who vowed to get a picture with every famous person who has attended Google (the myriad of pictures he has taken are displayed in the main entrance to the Google buildings). He has pictures with movie stars, multiple presidents, and other famous names across the board. While I looked, however, I didn't see him at the Michael Franti concert!

Perhaps more interesting to me though, is not the movie stars that Google attracts, but rather the brilliant minds from the globe that join us weekly for guest lectures. I cannot even begin to describe how often I leave a talk speechless and awestruck at the great work being completed on this planet. 

La dolce vita.