I'm Feeling Lucky_ The Confessions of Google Employee Number 59 - Douglas Edwards [7]
The curly-haired young receptionist smiled at me. I looked at her and recalled tales of secretaries walking off with millions from early stock options. Would she be one of them? She guided me to a small room decorated with a nine-foot whiteboard, a standard-issue circular table, and several inflated rubber balls large enough to sit on. Nothing here suggested rivers of currency dammed and waiting to burst forth in a torrential IPO. It was just a conference room in a generic office building on a lazy late-autumn afternoon. As I sat idly patting a three-foot ball, a number of folks on the business side of the company straggled in and introduced themselves.
Susan Wojcicki, who owned the garage that had been Google's first headquarters, had left Intel to join her tenants' company as a marketing manager. Cindy McCaffrey had come over from Apple to be director of public relations. Together they walked me through a general introduction to Google with the sort of positive energy that bubbled over everywhere in those days. At least they had facts on which to build their optimism. Time had written up the site, traffic was growing by leaps and bounds, and Google had ample financial backing, though no immediate source of revenue. That would come in time, they assured me. They asked about my experience, especially with viral marketing, which Cindy indicated was important to the company's founders, Larry Page and Sergey Brin.
"Oh sure, I've done viral," I assured them, whipping through my bulging portfolio to show them the "Nerd for the New Millennium" contest I'd worked up with the Tech Museum and the oval SV.com stickers the Merc had sent local venture capitalists to stick on their Porsches. It wasn't exactly "viral," but it was what I had.
They were equally orthogonal in answering my questions about Google's business model and corporate structure.
"Right now we license search technology," Susan informed me, "but we've got some other things in the works."
"We have a very flat organization," Cindy said. "We don't have very clearly defined roles, and everyone does everything."
I smiled and nodded to indicate that this made perfect sense to me, thanked them, and said it sounded as if Google had a marvelous future.
As the Taurus crept home along Highway 101, I turned up the radio and sang along. I had the impression that Cindy and Susan were interested and would call me back. That was a relief after so many months of throwing in my line and netting nothing. I felt my luck was turning. I had been hungry for a long time and now scented an opportunity I could really sink my teeth into.
A Hard Question Rewarded with Raw Fish
Two days later, Leesa, the Google recruiter, called me back. Could I meet with more members of the staff? I could and I did. Scott Epstein, the interim VP of sales, wished me good luck. He was phasing out after proposing Google spend millions on an ad campaign—an idea that didn't sit well with Larry and Sergey. Urs Hölzle, Google's head of engineering, greeted me warmly and advised me not to lie on the floor and act like a chew toy near Yoshka, the wooly mammoth noisily slurping water from a bowl behind him.* Omid Kordestani, the newly hired head of sales and business development, forgave me for trash-talking AOL even though he had worked there.
Afterward, Cindy took me back to the conference room to wait for Sergey. I wasn't nervous. Sergey was about the age of my favorite t-shirt and a Russian by birth. I had lived in Russia and spoke some Russian. I had Russian friends and embraced their dark humor, their cynical views, and their sarcastic ways. I felt unusually confident that the interview would go well. Perhaps Sergey was seeking a mentor? I pictured