Man Page Writing: Life/Times of Man Page Writer

Last Friday night, a friend of my son's who's a Google employee invited my wife and me to visit Google's Mt. View campus. As we drove there along Garcia Ave., I noted with a twinge the number of former Sun and Silicon Graphics buildings that are now occupied by the big G.

Our first impression: Everyone is the age of our children. Get me out of here! Just kidding, of course. My kids are welcome home anytime. But it was fun. There is an exuberance about youth that is impossible to fake. I don't care how excited you are about your job, at some level, the everyday aspect of a job can be a grind. Well, when you're young even that grind is new and it's kinda cool.

Our host, who, I must digress to say, is the foremost under-30 Argentine economist working in the Bay Area, shared a meal with us in one of the dining rooms. The food was terrific. My wife and I had a beer (free, of course), sat in a rather scary massage chair, and used the rest room. I'd ordinarily not report on such matters, but this, at least for my wife, was special. It was the first time she'd ever encountered a heated toilet seat. The device was also equipped with water jets that would cleanse a lady's "front and back seats".

Enough anatomy.

Sprinkled throughout each building are kitchen areas with high tech espresso machines and cabinets and refrigerators stocked with all manner of goodies. It was the sort of stuff you see in a fancy grocery store and consider buying but would never allow yourself to be that extravagant.

All free.

Some other impressions: Google is big, borderline huge. I think they're going to have to give up the notion of being the Peter Pan of companies and decide what kind of big company they want to be. GE? They've been very profitable for a very long time. Johnson & Johnson? They too are successful and have the reputation of treating their employees well. 3M? Another possibility. Pre-Carly HP? A worthy model. Microsoft? Please. IBM? Could happen.

I gotta wonder, too, about all the perquisites--notably the food and drink. It's gotta cost a bundle to serve all that wonderful, fresh, often organic food, three meals a day, every day. It's tough to go backwards. I wonder whether the people running Google are setting the bar too high.

What do you do when you're on top? Sun never achieved the heights achieved by Google, but at the crest of the Internet boom we rode high for a period of 2-3 years. What should we have done then to keep the party going or, at least, prevent a precipitous drop-off? We were extravagant in our spending. That's one thing I could identify even then. But that's not a completely satisfying answer. I'll leave that topic for a future note.

For now, Google looks like a fun place to work, but I expect some growing pains in the near future. That's a cultural, not a financial, prediction.