On a Thursday afternoon before the holidays, the game room at Google's new offices in Chelsea was being put to good use.
Two engineers taking a break from coding were at the pool table. A programmer in a purple Phish T-shirt was practicing juggling. Sweet Child O' Mine by Guns N' Roses blasted from the flat-screen television, where two 22-year-olds played Guitar Hero, a video game that lets players strum scaled-down guitars.
Last August, Google started moving its 500-plus employees in New York from a cramped Times Square office to a former Port Authority building occupying a full city block, from Eighth Avenue to Ninth Avenue and from 15th Street to 16th Street.
PHOTO: NY TIMES NEWS SERVICE
The new office, which officially opened on Oct. 2, is the company's largest engineering center outside its headquarters in Mountain View, California, which is dubbed the Googleplex.
You could be forgiven for not knowing that a satellite Google campus is growing in downtown Manhattan. There is no Google sign on the building, and it's hard to catch a glimpse of a Googler, as employees call themselves, on the street because the company gives them every reason to stay within its candy-colored walls.
From lava lamps to abacuses to cork coffee tables, the offices may as well be a Montessori school conceived to cater to the needs of future science-project winners. The Conde Nast and Hearst corporations have their famous cafeterias designed by, Frank Gehry and Norman Foster, respectively, but Google has free food, including a sushi bar and espresso stations. There are private phone booths for personal calls and showers and lockers for anyone running or biking to work.
The campuslike workspace is antithetical to the office culture of most New York businesses. It is a vision of a workplace utopia as conceived by rich, young, single engineers in Silicon Valley, transplanted to Manhattan.
The New York tradition of leaving the office to network over lunch has no place at Google, where employees like to socialize among themselves. There are groups of Gayglers, Newglers and Bikeglers, who bike to work together. Every Thursday afternoon there is a gathering with wine and beer called Thank God It's Almost Friday.
At recent lunch in the cafeteria, the two major Googler factions, engineers and sales representatives, tended to sit segregated at long tables. It was easy to tell them apart: the engineers wore jeans, T-shirts and sneakers; the sales representatives wore suits, no tie. There was nary a designer handbag or gray hair in the room.
Food is a major perk at the Manhattan Googleplex. Every Tuesday afternoon, tea with crumpets and scones is served. In the cafeteria a dry-erase board lists local purveyors of the ingredients in the meals like a sign at the Union Square Greenmarket.
All the free food has created a problem familiar to college freshmen.
"Everyone gains 10 or 15 pounds [4.5kg or 6.8kg] when they start working here," said James Tipon, a member of the sales team, who actively contributes to the 2kg of M&Ms consumed by New York Googlers daily.
"I definitely gained that when I started working here, but I think I shed some of it," Tipon said. "I try to be disciplined but it's really hard."
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 Burdon, who previously worked for Goldman Sachs, Sony and IBM.
The only time he could remember leaving the office during the workday was to buy a friend a birthday present.
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.
The majority of New York Googlers joined the company after its initial public offering, and it was the success of that launch, along with the meteoric rise of the stock that allowed a hiring boom, which lead to the move into new offices.
There doesn't seem to be open initial public offering envy in the New York office among newer hires, although the question, "How long have you worked here?" carries more weight than at most companies.
One reason Google chose its new site, according to Google-watching bloggers, is because the building sits over a major Internet fiber-optic line running up Ninth Avenue.
For a Thank God It's Almost Friday gathering this month, Laura Garrett, a sales operations specialist, organized an art show.
"Being a Googler and being part of Chelsea, I wanted to do something that was more downtownish than a typical Google event," Garrett said.
Williamsburg artists created the work on display. About 150 Googlers showed up.
It was the first time that employees could bring a guest to an event at their offices. The Empire State Building glowed red and green in the background as if color-coordinated to the Googleplex's interiors rather than Christmas. By 6:30pm, Steve Saviano, 22, a software engineer, was hanging out with his fellow Googlers at a table littered with empty beer and wine bottles.
"This is academic life all over again," Saviano said. "But I'm getting paid. This is a 100 percent better option than graduate school."
MORE VISITORS: The Tourism Administration said that it is seeing positive prospects in its efforts to expand the tourism market in North America and Europe Taiwan has been ranked as the cheapest place in the world to travel to this year, based on a list recommended by NerdWallet. The San Francisco-based personal finance company said that Taiwan topped the list of 16 nations it chose for budget travelers because US tourists do not need visas and travelers can easily have a good meal for less than US$10. A bus ride in Taipei costs just under US$0.50, while subway rides start at US$0.60, the firm said, adding that public transportation in Taiwan is easy to navigate. The firm also called Taiwan a “food lover’s paradise,” citing inexpensive breakfast stalls
TRADE: A mandatory declaration of origin for manufactured goods bound for the US is to take effect on May 7 to block China from exploiting Taiwan’s trade channels All products manufactured in Taiwan and exported to the US must include a signed declaration of origin starting on May 7, the Bureau of Foreign Trade announced yesterday. US President Donald Trump on April 2 imposed a 32 percent tariff on imports from Taiwan, but one week later announced a 90-day pause on its implementation. However, a universal 10 percent tariff was immediately applied to most imports from around the world. On April 12, the Trump administration further exempted computers, smartphones and semiconductors from the new tariffs. In response, President William Lai’s (賴清德) administration has introduced a series of countermeasures to support affected
CROSS-STRAIT: The vast majority of Taiwanese support maintaining the ‘status quo,’ while concern is rising about Beijing’s influence operations More than eight out of 10 Taiwanese reject Beijing’s “one country, two systems” framework for cross-strait relations, according to a survey released by the Mainland Affairs Council (MAC) on Thursday. The MAC’s latest quarterly survey found that 84.4 percent of respondents opposed Beijing’s “one country, two systems” formula for handling cross-strait relations — a figure consistent with past polling. Over the past three years, opposition to the framework has remained high, ranging from a low of 83.6 percent in April 2023 to a peak of 89.6 percent in April last year. In the most recent poll, 82.5 percent also rejected China’s
PLUGGING HOLES: The amendments would bring the legislation in line with systems found in other countries such as Japan and the US, Legislator Chen Kuan-ting said Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) Legislator Chen Kuan-ting (陳冠廷) has proposed amending national security legislation amid a spate of espionage cases. Potential gaps in security vetting procedures for personnel with access to sensitive information prompted him to propose the amendments, which would introduce changes to Article 14 of the Classified National Security Information Protection Act (國家機密保護法), Chen said yesterday. The proposal, which aims to enhance interagency vetting procedures and reduce the risk of classified information leaks, would establish a comprehensive security clearance system in Taiwan, he said. The amendment would require character and loyalty checks for civil servants and intelligence personnel prior to
RSS