I'm Feeling Lucky_ The Confessions of Google Employee Number 59 - Douglas Edwards [10]
I had been hired during one of the company's first big staffing ramp-ups, and there were many new faces besides mine and Aydin's: Charlie Ayers, the Google chef; massage therapists Babette Villasenor and Bonnie Dawson; webmaster Karen White; and Shari Fujii, the offline marketing manager. We joined the forty engineers and operations staff already in place and the dozen or so business-side staffers who made up the rest of the company.
There was no organizational chart to consult for a quick status check, and the obvious signs demarcating relative importance to the organization were absent. Even Larry and Sergey shared an office, albeit a slightly larger one, just like everyone else. Titles were generic. The position both Shari and I had applied for was "Marketing Director" according to Google's website, though that position didn't actually seem to exist. Google preferred to call us "managers." I shrugged my shoulders and swallowed my pride.
"Titles aren't important," Sergey reminded us on a regular basis. "We'll all do better if we have a flat organization with few levels to facilitate communication and avoid bureaucracy." I accepted the startup assumption that success would float all boats and decided not to get hung up on traditional progress mileposts like money and prestige. After twenty years of working toward my next pay raise and a chance to level up on the corporate org chart, what I did in the office would become an end unto itself. I hadn't felt the same mixture of liberation and anxiety since the day I stuck my diploma in a drawer and first opened a help-wanted section.
I spent the next eight hours settling in, collecting Google's standard-issue mechanical pencils and quadrille-ruled lab books from a metal file cabinet and arranging my stapler and tape dispenser and docking station and inbox until my desk was exactly balanced. I was ready, but not sure for what.
I took a personal inventory. Two decades in marketing had taught me many practical things, from how to build consensus across divisions to how to write a CYA memo when I wanted to color outside the lines. I viewed that experience as an important asset but was beginning to suspect that within the walls of the Googleplex,* it might be valued differently. I had wanted to live the Silicon Valley startup life, with its complete lack of longstanding rules. Now, poised on the precipice of realizing that dream, I asked myself, "My God. What have I done?"
Chapter 2
In the Beginning
HEY, WANT TO see something cool?" Jay asked me, standing in the micro-kitchen eating from a cup of yogurt, barefoot and sporting pajama pants, a well-loved sweatshirt, and a graying ponytail.
"Sure," I said, though I couldn't imagine anything cooler than the kitchen itself. One entire wall was lined with bins of granola and cereal. Other bins were filled with Gummi Bears, peach gels, M&Ms,* nutrition bars, and instant oatmeal. Caffeinated and carbonated beverages chilled inside illuminated Google-branded coolers. Boxes of soy milk and Rice Dream stood stacked in the corners. A toaster and a new white breadmaker gleamed on the counter next to the sink.
I'd been at work almost a week and was getting the lay of the land. Jay and Radhika, both engineers and parents, were the only ones who arrived at the office as early as I did, perhaps because we all had kids to drop off on the way. Jay was around my age and a veteran of the Valley who had already been at Google more than a month, making him a valuable source of knowledge about the corporate culture.
I followed him toward a row of glass offices in the engineering zone. He pointed to a large K'nex roller coaster stretching