Disclaimer: I work at Google; the opinions expressed here are my own, not Google’s.
I just passed the fifteen year mark for working at Google. This seems crazy to me – how can it have been that long? That’s longer than I’ve done just about anything.
When people I’m interviewing ask me what I like about Google, why I’m still there (although admittedly not many interviewees think to ask about how long that actually is), my usual answer has two parts:
1. The people
2. The variety
Google has grown immensely since I started working there, and with that growth has come a bunch of new projects. When I started, Google had about five total products (Search, Ads, AdSense, News, the Toolbar, Images, and maybe one or two others I’m forgetting). Now it has… I have no idea how many. Lots. Hardware & software. Cloud stuff. Enterprise stuff and small-business stuff. Consumer stuff. Video stuff. Mapping stuff. Lots of stuff!
And with that variety has come the ability to move around, to change projects, to experiment and try things. My estimate is that I usually spend about two to three years in any given role (sometimes it’s hard to define what a role change really is; some shifts are more obvious than others). I’ve worked on sales tax systems and enterprise administration systems and mapping and search and news and partnership stuff and abuse and payments and for a brief moment while I was trying to figure out what to do next, hardware. In addition to projects, I’ve changed job roles. I’ve taken two leaves of absence and been part of I-don’t-know-how-many teams.
There are areas I haven’t worked in – most noticeably, ads & core search (the big ones!).
Some of my favorite people from the early days are still around. Some aren’t. That’s okay – I’ve learned that the people I most want to stay in touch with, I mostly stay in touch with, and some of the brand-new-hires turn out to become some of my favorite people too. I’m pleased that some of the people I first met on a difficult project over ten years ago are people I work with on a completely different project today.
I’ve always been officially based in Mountain View, but I’ve travelled to offices in Australia, India, Israel, Japan, and in the US, New York. Later this year I expect to travel to Indonesia.
Every so often somebody asks me, “what was it like when…?” and I find that my answers are mostly lightweight. Most recently, somebody asked “was that in your Noogler orientation?” and I replied, “we didn’t have Noogler orientation,” without realizing initially what a big shift that really represents. We didn’t have orientation, or videoconferences, or a homegrown Calendar app, or multiple cafes serving three meals a day, or Android. We didn’t always have enough desks.
But overall, we were held together then, as we are now, by the threads connecting each of us to each other. (Also an enthusiasm for food. We used to have lobster pasta at lunch sometimes. And donuts, dammit!) We are in my experience an opinionated, vocal bunch of well-intentioned people trying to build and do interesting things. We argue, we debate, we try hard to get it right. We put in effort and time and intention. We care.
And I think that’s why, when somebody asks me, “how was it different then?” that I always come up short on an answer. In a lot of ways, of course, it’s very different. The company is something like sixty times bigger than it was when I started. Of course it’s different.
But in a lot of ways, it’s very much the same. And I suppose that’s why I’m still there.
something happens next 