The Google Welcome!

Yesterday unexpectedly I found myself wondering in the corridors of the Google Hyderabad office. No I was not kidnapped, I was invited by one of my college mates from Google for their Bring-Your-Friend-To-Work Day! It would have been a real nice gesture if it wasn't so starkly evident that their HR dept. had a big role to play behind the organisation of the event.

Walking into the Google office I became reminiscent of my internship days in Amazon. Overcrowded cubibles... and yet it was different in a way that they all appeared submerged in their own little world. There was a chaotic sense of life that I used to love among the Amazonians that somehow seemed missing here, but may be I wasn't looking hard enough. My bad.

But my biggest disappointment came from the content of the event. Frankly it was a sorry attempt of beat-my-own-drum in the name of explaining the Google culture. Most people who know me also know very well that I have been a Google fanatic for a very long time and yet each time I see someone from Google India representing their culture I find myself looking into the void and wondering if we both are even referring to the same entity! Had the very same experience when a Google representative had come to my college campus during placements and now again yesterday. May be its the "can't talk about the cool things publicly yet" syndrome but honestly, if you are not going to show the cool side of things then save us from the drudgery of the rest as well!

Google HR if you are listening, none of us needed a lecture on data warehousing or backrub. We can read the published papers ourselves if we are interested (and I am and I did long back when I was back in college). You didn't reveal anything that was not common knowledge anyways! Please don't doubt my intelligence by talking about database tables during such an event. If it's not evident already then let me spell it out... talk of things that will get you a WoW from the crowd, not a "Ya, I knew that already!"

I apologize for my cynicism but don't get me wrong. I have lots of respect for Google and it makes me sad to see my favorite rival being under-represented so badly. Frankly all I walked away with yesterday from the event was a strong sense that Google India is NO Google!

Thanks for all the goodies but we could have done without the deliberate "there is life after Microsoft" pitch. Next time you wanna have a HR event please have the courtesy to call it so. Almost every other "friend" seemed to be from Microsoft. Co-incedence? Don't Think so.

<wink>As someone very eloquently summarized on the signature board - "This was a great Microsoft puller event!"</wink>