The Google Lifestyle

If there’s any reason to work for Google, besides the innumerable ways they help people stay organized and informed, it would have to be how well the company treats its employees. A walk through the Google campus in Mountain View, CA, is enough to prove that.

The campus in Mountain View provides 19 cafes and multiple kitchens in every building—an effort they call the “150 feet rule.” The plentiful food stops offer wholesome and nutritious meals to all employees for free. The Nourish Cafe, for example, makes all its food from scratch using food grown on site.

“I have a hard time buying food on the weekends,” says Sterling Taylor, 22, a graduate of the University of Nevada, Reno and Google employee. “It’s so bad compared to what I eat here.”

The Mountain View campus also offers its employees four gyms, a heated swimming pool, a doctor, a dentist, a masseuse, and a place to get a haircut—all available on campus so employees can get errands taken care of during and at work. But while Google is one of the most successful businesses in the world, the employees don’t let work get in the way of fun and playfulness.

Google’s headquarters are rife with statues, toys and other eye-popping decorations that contribute to the company’s fun nature. Nerf guns and board games sit in many of the lobbies, extravagant statues of donuts and eclairs decorate the lawns, and a model T-Rex stands guard in the quad.

Photo by Sebastian Diaz

Along with all of this, Google also aims to be sustainability driven. They scatter bicycles (themed after Google’s colors of red, green and yellow) throughout the campus for any employee to use to reach the twenty buildings on site. Google also provides shuttles and a fleet of hybrid vehicles to assist employees with travel to and from work. An immense 9,212 solar panels help power the campus and provide a charging station for those needing to plug their car in.

Taylor graduated last year with a degree in Information Systems from UNR and gained a full-time job at Google. He says he applied online, and that Google was very quick with the application process. After making it through an initial phone interview, Taylor survived four grueling interviews in one day, which he says were all harder than any exam in college.

“I felt like an idiot, actually,” Taylor says. “They just know so much.”

With a company as innovative and forward-pushing as Google, Taylor says people know right away whether they are cut out for the job or not.

“I’m lucky to have graduated with a full-time job with Google,” Taylor says.

Though he says not a lot at UNR helped prepare him for a Google job, his leadership experience as a resident assistant for dorms is part of what helped him gain the job.

“Leadership is always a valuable asset to have,” Taylor says about getting the job, as well as his ability to adapt and apply new or unknown concepts. “Anyone considering a job at Google should possess advanced problem solving skills and be able to adapt to a constant changing environment.”

After starting work in Information Systems last August at Google, Taylor said he feels the company takes a really decentralized approach. Every Friday, the campus holds a large meeting which allows employees to communicate directly with executives and really get a feel for what’s going on with Google.

Taylor said that Google wants people to be doing what they enjoy to do. Their solution to this is called “20 percent time,” which allows employees to spend a portion of their work week in another department of the company if they wish.

Google will even allow its employees to work at a different location in the world. If Taylor wanted to go work in Japan a few weeks, he could do so easily, he says.

He will visit UNR this November to talk about the program with students.