Sustainability: Life and Work at Google

Had a great time touring the Google NYC offices last week. The main take aways (aside from the snacks every fifty feet) were: fostering accountability, encouraging collaboration by space design and the focus on play. But here is a look at the question of personal sustainability in this work environment.

Google is a company started by two post docs back in the 90s (heard of it?). They were young guys obsessed with their work and-- it seems-- pretty eager to have a good time while they were doing it. The fame of Google culture is built out of that beginning; people love to work at Google and they work hard. They work a ton too, long days (even if they start at 10am) and late hours are the norm. The atmosphere is such (rec rooms, scooters for transportation, candy, coffee, snacks, on-site massage and laundry) that there is really little reason for people to leave the office, ever.

In our class discussion about our visit one classmate brought up the notion of the golden-handcuffs-- it is so great at Google, that it might be hard for people to imagine leaving. Not to mention, it is a really fantastic place to work because of the challenging, exciting and meaningful work that people do. This reminded me of the feeling of living at a boarding school where your food and housing (and sometimes children's tuition along with a host of other perks) are covered as part of your work. The work is amazingly satisfying and rewarding, and there are so many great things that go along with the job, that it might be inconceivable to think of walking away.

Walking around Google, seeing the possibility of collaboration, the excitement, the FUN, I thought about my kid at home. Our tour guide is a more "senior"member of the staff (maybe 40!) and has children and spoke about his longer commute to the 'burbs and how he routinely spends over 12 hours a day at the office. Ugh. I started thinking about the questions surrounding long-term personal sustainability at a workplace like Google. Even free m&m candies don't make it fun to be away from your kid every waking hour. Then Jamie made a really great point: they don't have to make it the perfect environment for everybody because they can fill every spot (hundreds of times, I'm sure) with really great people who want exactly what they are getting-- a wonderful and all-consuming job at an amazing company.

What are the implications of all of this for school cultures? Seems that we need to be mindful that our communities are appropriate and sustainable for all of the people that we want on our proverbial bus.

Photo Credit blogpictorial