I'm Feeling Lucky_ The Confessions of Google Employee Number 59 - Douglas Edwards [116]
"My mind is money," Larry once explained to Charlie, pointing to a bottle, "and that kills the brain."
"I think he could spare a few brain cells," Charlie told me later.
Other members of the executive staff more willingly sacrificed bits of gray matter, and Charlie made sure their rooms were stocked with their favorite indulgences in case they didn't make it to the party down in the Den.
"It's always cool to see people let loose and have a good time," Charlie observed, confirming the opportunities for staff bonding. "Googlers really let go in ways you wouldn't have seen otherwise." He may have had in mind the toga-wearing ops guys who were only too willing to prove they were unburdened by underwear. Or maybe the sales rep who jumped on the back of another Googler, pulled off her shirt, and began whipping him with it jockey style. Or perhaps the senior manager seen crawling on all fours in the hallway, barking like an inebriated hound.
There was a pajama party with costume prizes. Larry won a bet with Sergey, Salar, and engineer Lori Park that ended with the losers jumping into an icy Lake Tahoe after dinner.
"We tried to re-create Google's 'un-corporation' attitude," Charlie explained to me, "a kind of 'fuck you' to the man, the way Google was saying that same thing to the tech industry as a whole."
Some people who visited Charlie's Den never left, crashing on the floor for the night, though that carried risks of its own, since passing out left one vulnerable to the sophomoric pranks of those still sober enough to stand. Others couldn't remember where they had fallen: one engineer woke up without his clothes and eventually discovered he'd left them at the hot tub. He sheepishly reclaimed them from the front desk. All night long, white-terry-robed figures circulated from room to room, then down to the bar or out to the boulder-shrouded spa, in Lupercalian celebration of the season.
As the company grew in size, more non-engineers participated. Many were female. The Google ski trip came to be known as a great party to crash, with live dance music from bands like the Fabulous Thunderbirds, ample alcohol, and lots of young, unattached people looking to undo the stress of Silicon Valley lives. Uninvited guests were legion.
I uninvited myself after my first trip, and found myself working uninterrupted in the Plex as phones went unanswered all around me. I walked interview candidates down empty hallways and ate pizza I ordered in for the few of us still around. Ski week became my time to clear my inbox and catch up on lagging projects.
By 2007 the size of the company made the annual ski trip impossible, and Google ended it in favor of smaller outings to more family-friendly locales like Disneyland. That was probably a good thing, though I'll always cherish the scars I earned at broomball* and the camaraderie of shared experiences on the slopes and in the lodge. My warm feelings, however, stop at the hot tub and chats by the fireplace, and accordingly may not be as heated as those kindled by some of my friskier colleagues. You'll have to ask them about that.
Surprisingly Good News
"Table! Table! Table!" chanted the crowd at TGIF.
At the front of the room, Omid Kordestani, head of sales, grinned broadly, tugged at the leg of his black Armani slacks, and climbed onto a conference table while holding a microphone in one hand. The crowd