I’ve been negligent about updating my blog for the past two months… I’ve also been told that I really need to post an update about my new job, so here you go:
A few weeks ago, I joined Google! Due to the sheer size of the company and the corresponding infrastructure, there’s a huge learning curve, so I can’t post anything specific about my concrete job yet. However, the environment is truly fantastic. Google very much feels like a college campus, and the collective brain power in this place is pretty amazing. But what is even more amazing is the degree to which engineers are empowered at Google, which has a strong bottom-up culture. Not to mention the quality of the many gourmet food cafeterias across the campus (I haven’t even had a chance to try half of them yet…).
I’ve mostly worked at small startups (although some of these ultimately ended up as part of a somewhat larger organization due to acquisitions), so Google is definitely a big change. But this is not your typical rigid and formal large company, and in many (good) aspects it still reminds of a startup. In other ways it almost feels like its own autonomous ecosystem. For example, for whatever question you might have or whatever topic might interest you, there’s bound to be a mailing list with plenty of experts on it. Almost like good old Usenet when it was still working… There are extensive training sessions, self organizing user groups for various topics, etc.
It feels good to be part of a massively successful, impactful company like Google.