Google takes pride in letting its employees experience with the little things and hatch their ideas in a supportive and innovative environment. As Avinash Kaushik would explain his 'Micro Efficiencies' experience working for the internet giant, Google.
Source and Pictures : Avinash Kaushik
# 9: "Micro Efficiencies".
Google has all these "micro efficiencies" that are very clever and well thought out. Each in a small way makes life easy for someone working at Google, but taken in aggregate, in my opinion, add up to a big advantage for the company.
Here's a tiny example. . . .
All conference rooms are wired for everything you need to make your life easy. In my prior companies I had to reserve a projector, and mostly forgot, and carry my power bricks and my ethernet cables etc. At Google all the power adapters you need are in the conf room, Apple or ThinkPads, and there are two projectors in every conf room (and most have high bandwidth video conferencing) and did you see the dvi – vga converters? This makes my life easier in a small but significant way.
I also absolutely love the tech stop idea. If there is a tech support issue no need to open a ticket and wait for salvation from the help desk (though you can), you can simply walk to the closest Tech Stop and the Geek Gods there will fix any problem on the spot (and they smile and are super nice people). What a time saver!
Ditto for the Hardware Depots in various buildings. Need a mouse or head phones or a battery or power adapter or . . . any peripheral? Walk into the the Hardware Depot, scan your badge, pick up, walk out. Very convenient, huge time saver (no need to fill requisitions and do a long line of paperwork!).
There are so many little things that you'll find at Google that you'll come to appreciate, especially if you have worked for a while at other companies.
Micro efficiencies that result in significant macro efficiency.
# 8: A company that truly cares.
You sit on the outside and you read all the stories and your first thought was: "Yeah right! They do "all that"! Probably just to keep you at work and working like a dog."
To some extent I did too.
I was wrong, and so are you.
For any company it is easy to provide you with free food, get you shuttles to commute, have beer parties on fridays, decorate the offices nice, and have free drinks and Naked Juices. If it wanted to.
Typically what happens is that you get bored of the "cafe food" and the rest pretty quickly because often companies pay lip service to things like that.
At Google the food never gets boring because each cafe has a executive / sous chef and when you eat they'll come chat with you and ask you what you think of the food (to your utter shock the first few times). They actually care.
TGIF each friday at Google is something else.
The commute shuttles are very comfortable, have wi-fi and are frequent.
I am struck at how with everything there is this touch of extra, and that shows that the company does really care about you.
Here is another example that struck me. . . .
We live in earthquake belt. And it is not that hard to create a earthquake kit for yourself. Gallon of water, first aid kit, manually chargeable flashlight / radio etc etc. Not that hard, yet few of us have it.
A couple of months ago I saw the Google employees walking around with nifty backpacks. They were earthquake kits that Google created for and gave all its employees (not contractors, legally that is not allowed).
That was so nice. It even had water! The company did not have to do it, to me it was about going to extra step for their employees.
This is why Google employees are so loyal to their company, the company tries to care for them and the employees care back.
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