Internal Microsoft Email about Life at Google

An anonymous reader wrote in to give us "An interesting perspective on Google, from an internal email sent around Microsoft. Basically an interview that provides analysis about how Google compares to Microsoft from an employee perspective. Included are suggestions for what Microsoft might copy in order to stay competitive in the job market and criticisms of Google's "college kid" atmosphere."

Re:Lost me in the first para

[truthsearch]

And the name of this new blog: Just Say "No" To Google

Biased?

My own experience at Google

[spyrochaete]

I blogged about my own experience at Googleplex [demodulated.com] in Mountain View. I concur that Google is very hush hush in general. My most surprising observation was that the security guards were rather laid-back while some engineers were very solemn and confrontational. This is not indicative of the overall feel of the place though - it's like a cruise ship party where people do work.

Re:isn't this normal?

[Lockejaw]

*shrug* If they get to count time spent in the cafeteria as "time at work," they're getting a better deal that I ever have. Not to mention the excellent meal prices.

Re:isn't this normal?

[QunaLop]

hours at work != hours worked the author's point, which seemed obvious to me was that the average worker spends an average amount of time there, but their time spent at home is dominated by work there as well.

Re:isn't this normal?

[SeattleGameboy]

What he means is that employees as a whole are in the building 10AM and 6PM. But that means that there are a lot of people who come in at 7AM and leave by 6PM and others who come in by 10AM and leave by 9PM. 10AM and 6PM is when you expect "everyone" to be at work, does not preclude people working 10 to 12 hours a day.

Re:Tech stops

[EvilNight]

That's very close to the way IT works at my current company. Most of the company is on one building (with the other remote site literally two blocks down the street). I try to maintain working computers and a good cache of spare parts so that I can fix any problems with hardware in minutes. Our office is sitting in the middle of the building, and the door's always open. People pop in from time to time all day long (and it's not as distracting as you might think). I have spare machines and can do a data move (without disrupting the OS no matter what it is) in less than an hour to new hardware.

I also set up a central RIS repository that publishes all apps in the organization. If a user has permission to use the app, I put him in the right group and it just shows up under add/remove programs. Any user can hit F12 and do a network boot to install any of our selection of operating systems or run a variety of troubleshooting tools. PXELinux is remarkably easy to graft into Microsoft's RIS server, so I can publish a variety of linux distributions and tools the same way, all preconfigured to know where their network repositories are. Updates for all OSes we support (solaris, several linux, windows) are maintained on the same servers in the same way.

This is like a tech stop for software. The users never have to ask us for programs and they can handle many of their IT needs on their own terms, with us always a door down the hall if they need help. Most of our users are developers and are quite capable of managing their OSes and apps and they love having this freedom. This is especially useful for virtual machines which most of our devs use for sandboxing. They can boot the VM off of the network and set it up any way they like.

Sure, we give them admin rights to their systems - how the hell do you get dev work done without? We just configure their web browsers so the browser itself runs under an underprivileged account, which solves most of the security problems.

It works great, and most tech calls you get in that kind of environment tend to be real problems. We had a ticketing system - but we scrapped it because it took more time to open a ticket, describe the problem, and close the ticket later than it took to just get up and go talk to the user and fix the problem.

This model is very laid back and really puts the power of IT into the hands of the users, while freeing up the admins to handle things that are worthwhile instead of trivia like finding media or dealing with obscure permissions problems. All you need to implement it is one reasonably personable technician, a low-cost server to hold the data, and a day or so to get it all up and running. Any network jack has every IT tool you could possibly need, and if that's not enough we have a massively hacked version of XP and tools crammed onto a single USB key that will boot on any ACPI-capable computer (with 1.6GB of drivers - it has them all). Fits in your pocket and it can fix or recover anything.

When I started here the tech group was five people who spent all day running around with CDs and screwdrivers, and we were generally hated. Five years later we have 30% more employees and only two techs who spend most of their time learning new systems and skills rather than supporting infrastructure, and everyone is on a first name basis. It's good enough to make me wince just thinking about going back to a typical corporate IT job. It's going to be fun converting the entire thing to linux.

Can there be a balance?

[ErichTheRed]

Here's an idea for us older types with families...I think IT companies would have fewer retention problems if they balanced this "take care of everything" approach with some reasonable limits.

Here's an example: Most parents would love the idea of on-site daycare for their kids. It's the 2000s, and many women actually want to keep working after they have kids. Making the whole childcare thing easier would definitely keep good, more experienced workers in place and productive.

The problems come when this extra stuff is provided with the understanding that you will work tons of extra hours for it. The college campus atmosphere works for younger workers, but most older ones with families want a balance.

In your 20s, especially in the IT world, you don't have a whole lot of outside commitments. You can go to work, then go home to an empty apartment. This doesn't fly once you get married and you're expected to put time in outside of the office. This is another reason why Big 5 consulting is so attractive to the young. A job where you get to travel, drink in strange places, and make a lot of money is a really easy sell for a new grad.

I think companies (especially software/hardware/services houses) would be really surprised how much a few extra "grown up" perks add to productivity. If I have to make one less trip a day because something's provided, that's more time I can be contributing. One of these things would be an enclosed work space...cube life is annoying especially when you have loud neighbors.

Re:I heard... Over at Google

[Anonymous Coward]

You know -- it's up to yourself, really. I work full-time at Google, and I work reasonable hours (about 7 hours every day). When I go home, I leave work at work. You're not giving up anything unless you want to yourself.

It is happening

[Anonymous Coward]

Remember that Google is really an ad agency. That's how the money is made. Much of their newer hiring is sales reps for ads. The days when the ad sales just ran on autopilot are over; now Google has to push their ad products. In time, the ad agency people may take over. That will be an interesting culture change.

I think it is already happening. If you go to, for example, Google's Sydney office, there are way more ad reps working there than programmers. The same for the Melbourne or NZ offices, where they simply don't have any technical people.