Google in the belly of the beast
bicoastal December 31st, 2006
The NYT has an article today on Google’s new offices in Chelsea. As often happens, it’s a deep, and potentially political, commentary on American society, but the editors put it in the Styles section. (The most egregious example of this practice was a 2001 article on NYCers in Union Square protesting military action, just days after 9/11. I think then the strategy was to blunt criticism that the NYT was unpatriotic just for covering the protests. Here I’m not sure why it’s in Styles).
My memory is that back when major news outlets were covering the Googleplex in Mountain View, CA, they focused on how Google’s beach volleyball court, Segways gourmet food, and free massages encouraged the playful creativity that may make Google the market leader in so many domains. This is a behavioral-economics-ish take on the Google workplace.
But transplant the same infrastructure to NYC and the Times sees it as a clever way to keep employees at work longer:
The strategy of keeping employees happy and committed to spending endless hours on campus seems to be working. Richard Burdon, 37, an engineer who joined Google two years ago, has been staying past midnight to prepare for the introduction of a project. (Google’s Manhattan engineers have been responsible for developing Google Maps and are working on some 100 other projects.)
“Google is about as interesting as starting your own startup because you can really follow your own ideas,†said Mr. Burdon, who previously worked for Goldman Sachs, Sony and I.B.M. The only time he could remember leaving the office during the workday was to buy a friend a birthday present.
The Times seems to totally miss the other benefits — creativity, social cooperation, and . . . happiness. It is as if they are looking at the office with neoclassical blinders.
For example, we know that aside from longer hours, one upshot of having employees form a community is that money becomes less important relative to other forms of compensation, like community. The Times article is almost willfully blind to this, writing “Sure, the snacks and the employee affinity groups are nice. But the biggest perks are stock options dating from before Google’s initial public offering in August 2004.”
But then, a paragraph later, after noting that most NYC employees weren’t around for Google’s big IPO and the stock options that went with it, the article quotes an engineer who says “I’m not jealous . . . I’m still pretty happy I’m here.” Would we ever hear those words spoken by an investment banker? If we did, would we believe them?
i should mention that when i had lunch at the googleplex this summer, my host (a friend of a friend) mentioned that while the perks were great, she hadn’t gotten a raise in several years, even though, she said, she had done good work and been given more responsibility. so maybe google is very cynical. maybe they’re just less ham-handed about it than most big corporations…for now…
just an idea….
That’s a good point. I’ve also heard that a large percentage of Google’s staff is contracted, so they have no job security or health insurance. They seem to work on something like a deformed tenure system, where an elite of workers enjoys very high compensation of all types, and a very high number are highly insecure.