Perils of Caffeine in the Evening

This article about Google’s new Seattle workspace has generated a bit of discussion. The article leads off with:

It’s amazing that Google employees can get any work done.

Between the three daily catered meals, on-site massage therapist, free gym membership and game room (complete with air hockey, darts and Foosball), Google’s new development center in Fremont boasts amenities that rival some resorts.

Just in case there aren’t enough entertainment options, kayaks are available so staffers can go for a midday paddle on the nearby Lake Washington Ship Canal. There’s even a “quiet room” — complete with lava lamp, massage chair and wonderful views of the water — where Google employees can presumably dream up the next great Internet application while their muscles relax.

The place sounds more like one of those minimum-security federal prisons where they send Republican congressmen and white-collar criminals than a workplace. I’m surprised, actually, at the absence of an X-rated holodeck, but maybe that’s reserved for an elite of some kind, a west coast version of the old executive washroom. This place (Fremont) is just downhill from us to the southwest, and one of our main walking routes takes us right past the building (as does one of my favorite kayak trips). Here’s the setting Click photos to enlarge:

Coincidentally, last week when I was walking home from the sports bar where I watched the BCS NC game, I espied this opulent gameroom in an office building next to the Fremont Bridge, and photographed it (grainy cuz of high ISO). The sign on the building says “Getty Images”, but, in reading the article I’m assuming it belongs to Google.

The workplace has come a long way since I joined the workforce at a CPA firm in Toledo just out of college.  The profession had just recently quit requiring its employees to wear hats, and had just begun to hire women.  We had one in the tax department, where she wouldn’t be all that visible to clients, and one in the audit department, too, but she was always assigned to “girls’ jobs” like United Way and some other non-profits.

Often, an audit team I was on would wind up work at a client’s at 8 pm and we’d all head over to Brenda’s Body Shop for a refreshment involving “live girls” and dead beer.  I don’t think that happens much any more, at least as an organized activity.

I remember one meeting (all guys) where someone made a dumb comment, and the manager running the meeting turned to him and said, “you know, you’ve contributed about as much to this meeting as pantyhose did to fingerf**king.”  Don’t think that happens much any more, either.

I think it’s great that the workplace has achieved some human scale, and I think that women entering the professional workforce in numbers had a lot to do with it.  I’m not sure the Google culture is the climax species, or is even replicable, but it’s an interesting story to bubble out of a week of bleak economic news.  Mrs. Perils was skeptical, however - she’s certain that it’s nothing but a scam to keep their workers from ever leaving the building.  And it’s true that this fairy-tale is not likely to trickle down to the minimum-wage service economy any time soon.