January 26, 2005
Life Inside Google
An employee of Google gives the inside scoop on working at the company through his blog. Before Google he worked at Microsoft and IBM. Lots of juicy tidbits in there, some of which he was forced to remove when the company found out about the blog. The site was actually down for a couple days, then the internet went wild with rumors he got fired. After the hoopla, the site mysteriously came back. I don't think his comments are helping his career.On the commute:
google provides a pretty cool service for employees who want to live in san francisco: a free shuttle. not only is the shuttle free, but during your commute, you can connect onto the internet and do work.
Whining about compensation:
lastly, google demands employees that are 90th percentile material, so what's with the 50th percentile compensation? the packages would've been decent when the company was pre-IPO, but let's be honest here... a stock option with a strike price of $188 just doesn't have the same value as the ones of yesteryear. even microsoft adjusted their base salaries to 66th percentile years ago when it was clear that their stock options weren't as much a part of the total compensation package as it used to be. for a post-IPO company like google, it only seems fair that they adjust things accordingly.
On-site benefits:
then look at all these other fringe "benefits": on-site doctor, on-site dentist, on-site car washes... the list goes on and on with one similarity: every "benefit" is on-site so you never leave work. [Discuss]
