The impending Age Of Abundance was prophecied in the scriptures thousands of years ago.
Showing posts with label Googleplex. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Googleplex. Show all posts
Friday, March 02, 2012
Baratunde Thurston, The Ultimate Black Guy, At The Googleplex
Baratunde Thurston At The Web 2.0 Summit
Baratunde Thurston: The Brain Behind The Onion
Baratunde Is Funny
Buy the book on Amazon.
Official Site
On NPR
Wednesday, January 18, 2012
Secretive Apple
Image by marcopako via FlickrApple's ways are so different from Google's and yet they go neck and neck. It is a study in contrasts. No free lunch? Come on. Fortune: The secrets Apple keeps
Undercover meetings! Stealth product developments! The world's most successful company is obsessed with privacy. ..... for a corporation so frequently discussed, Apple is poorly understood. Its products are ubiquitous, but information about the institution is scarce -- which is exactly how Apple wants it ..... The business world keeps nattering on about the importance of corporate transparency, yet the most successful company in the world is beyond opaque. ...... Apple employees know something big is afoot when the carpenters appear in their office building. New walls are quickly erected. Doors are added and new security protocols put into place. Windows that once were transparent are now frosted. Other rooms have no windows at all. They are called lockdown rooms: No information goes in or out without a reason. ...... If it hasn't been disclosed to you, then it's literally none of your business. ...... the link between secrecy and productivity is one way that Apple (AAPL) challenges long-held management truths and the notion of transparency as a corporate virtue. ...... at Apple everything is a secret. .... loose-lips-sink-ships mentality: A T‑shirt for sale in the company store, which is open to the public at 1 Infinite Loop, reads: I VISITED THE APPLE CAMPUS. BUT THAT'S ALL I'M ALLOWED TO SAY. ....... Apple's airy physical surroundings belie its secretive core. ..... Unlike Google's famously and ridiculously named "Googleplex," where a visitor can roam the inner courtyards and slip into an open door as employees come and go, Apple's buildings are airtight. Employees can be spotted on the volleyball courts from time to time. More typically, visitors gaping into the courtyard will see a campus in constant motion. Apple employees scurry from building to building for meetings that start and end on time. ...... "And half the folks can't tell you what they're doing, because it's a secret project that they've gotten hired for." ....... Outside, Apple is revered. Inside, it is cultish ...... "There's only one free lunch at Apple, and it's on your first day" ...... the rationale is that when Apple launches a product, if it's been a secret up until the launch, the amount of press and coverage and buzz that you get is hugely valuable to the company. 'It's worth millions of dollars' ...... Apple's powerful senior vice president of product marketing, has been known to compare an Apple product launch to a blockbuster Hollywood movie opening weekend. ...... Apple fanboys camp out in front of Apple stores in anticipation of new Apple product releases in a way that is reminiscent of the lines that once greeted a new installment in the Lord of the Rings or Star Wars franchises ..... so they don't steal the thunder from existing products. If consumers know exactly what's coming, they may hold off on a purchase for fear it will be superseded by the next generation. .......... announcing products before they are ready gives the competition time to respond, raises customer expectations, and opens a company up to the carping of critics who are bashing an idea rather than an actual product. ...... Unfathomably, HP later "pre-announced" the sale of its PC business, inflicting immeasurable damage on a unit that accounted for nearly a third of its sales. (HP's board fired its CEO, Léo Apotheker, shortly after the announcement about the PC unit.) ....... Valley engineers love to swap stories about their work, but Apple engineers have a reputation for keeping to themselves. ..... "It's best in general not to talk about work." The mentality makes Apple stand out in the tech world. ..... People working on launch events will be given watermarked paper copies of a booklet called Rules of the Road that details every milestone leading up to launch day. In the booklet is a legal statement whose message is clear: If this copy ends up in the wrong hands, the responsible party will be fired. ...... You had to sign extra-special agreements acknowledging that you were working on a super-secret project and you wouldn't talk about it to anyone -- not your wife, not your kids. ...... "He'd say, 'Anything disclosed from this meeting will result not just in termination but in the prosecution to the fullest extent that our lawyers can.' This made me very uncomfortable. You have to watch everything you do. I'd have nightmares." ....... Company lore holds that plainclothes Apple security agents lurk near the bar at BJ's and that employees have been fired for loose talk there. It doesn't matter if the yarn is true or apocryphal. The fact that employees repeat it serves the purpose. ...... the Apple way is to mind one's own business. This has a side benefit that is striking in its simplicity: Employees prevented from butting into one another's affairs will have more time to focus on their own work. Below a certain level, it is difficult to play politics at Apple, because the average employee doesn't have enough information to get into the game. Like a horse fitted with blinders, the Apple employee charges forward to the exclusion of all else. ...... "We have cells, like a terrorist organization ... Everything is on a need‑to‑know basis." ...... Organization charts, typical fare at most big companies, don't exist at Apple. That is information employees don't need and outsiders shouldn't have. ...... the internal Apple Directory. This electronic guide lists each employee's name, group, manager, location, e-mail, and phone number, and might include a photograph. ..... The executive team, a small council of advisers to the CEO, runs the company, assisted by a cadre of fewer than 100 vice presidents. But rank doesn't always confer status at Apple. Everyone is aware of an unwritten caste system. The industrial designers are untouchable, as were, until his death, the cadre of engineers who had worked with Steve Jobs for years, some dating to his first stint at Apple. A small group of engineers carries the title of DEST, distinguished engineer/scientist, technologist. These are individual contributors with clout in the organization but no management responsibilities. ..... In terms of corporate coolness, functions such as sales, human resources, and customer service wouldn't even rate. ..... it isn't uncommon for employees to go places their boss cannot. ...... By and large, Apple is a collaborative and cooperative environment, devoid of overt politicking. The reason for the cooperation, according to former insiders, is the command-and-control structure. ...... Apple's culture may be cooperative, but it isn't usually nice, and it's almost never relaxed. ...... "The fighting can get personal and ugly. There's a mentality that it's okay to shred somebody in the spirit of making the best products." ...... "It's a culture of excellence," this person noted. "You don't want to be the weak link. There is an intense desire to not let the company down." ...... Apple's culture is the polar opposite of Google's, where fliers announcing extracurricular activities -- from ski outings to a high-profile author series -- hang everywhere. At Apple, the iTunes team sponsors the occasional band, and there is a company gym (which isn't free), but by and large Apple people come to work to work. "At meetings, there is no discussion about the lake house where you just spent the weekend," recalled a senior engineer. "You get right down to business." ...... "There is not a culture of recognizing and celebrating success. It's very much about work." Said another: "If you're a die-hard Apple geek, it's magical. It's also a really tough place to work." ..... Apple pays salaries that are competitive with the marketplace -- but no better. A senior director might make an annual salary of $200,000, with bonuses in good years amounting to 50% of the base. Talking about money is frowned upon at Apple. ..... "Sitting in a bar and seeing that 90% of the people there are using devices that your company made -- there is something cool about that, and you can't put a dollar value on it."
Wednesday, May 19, 2010
Google New York
Google New York Jobs
Can Google Come Out to Play? - New York Times
Google's New York Office Is a Glorious Catalog of Dot-Com Clichés...
InformationWeek | Galleries: Googleplex East: Inside Google's New...
Google Has Kangaroo At New York Office (VIDEO)
Video: Google Brings Kangaroo To NY Office- Gothamist
"The Search" - John Battelle speaks at Google NYC
Google New York: Scooters, Slides, And Legos -- Oh My!
YouTube - Baby Kangaroo at the Google NY office
Office 2010: A Tale of Decadence and Hand-to-Hand Combat - Bits
Office Snapshots » Google NYC Office - Video Tour
New Google Cafeteria Crushes Competitors' Cafeterias -- Grub...
Lego in NY Google Office
This is an office? - NYPOST.com
After search, Google finds snake in NY office| Reuters
Google: The New Port Authority - Page 1 - News -New York...
Google hiring 100 engineers for NY office
Google Gobbles 57K More Feet in Taconic's 111 Eighth | The New...
Facebook's NY Rent: $29k/Month
Google Opens Block-Long Office in N.Y.- Real Geek
A Quick Tour of Google NY- John Battelle's Searchblog
Google opens block-long office in N.Y.- USATODAY.com
A three-foot python the subject of Google's latest search - Apr. 3...
Official Google Blog: Snakes in a plain... old...office building!
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Sunday, June 14, 2009
Google Wave Developer Community: Asking For A Culture?
Google is about to get a vibrant developer community around Wave. This is a first for Google in terms of how big one can expect it to be. I guess the Android developer community also counts. The two can be considered the first among equals. But a mobile operating system was not something fundamentally new, Wave is.
There are about 20,000 people working for Google, many of them coders. Google has some of the smartest coders in the world. But not all of the smartest coders in the world work for Google. Most don't. It is a numbers game. Google is not big enough to house all the smartest coders in the world. Many of the smartest are soloists, or small group types who gutturally abhor anything corporate. The open source community appeals to many of them.
The Wave community will be a great platform for them. The top developers will make mega bucks. They will make much more than the late coming engineers at Google.
So if the Wave developer community is going to be larger than Google Corporate, and if many members of that developer community will make mega bucks, you have to ask, does that developer community need a culture? A codified value system? Will that evolve on its own? Or will each small group within that community have a slightly distinct culture and value system of its own?
Microsoft has had a developer community around Windows for as long as Windows has been around. The budding Wave community will be similar, only much, much bigger.
I take it for granted that a value system will emerge, just like a market will emerge. It will not be top down. It will not be something dictated by Google Corporate. It will be grassroots. It will likely be diverse. But it will emerge. It will have more in common with the unregulated, uncorporate open source community than Google Corporate. But that is no harbinger of clashes. The two cultures can create a happy symbiosis. That is precisely why just like it has been important to articulate the Google corporate culture, (The Google Corporate Culture) I think it is important to try and articulate the developer community culture.
Members of this developer community are more likely to show up for their local Wave MeetUps than jamborees at Googleplex, if only because the community will be global and scattered. Much of the community action will be online.
The Google Corporate Culture
Google Wave: Organizations Will Go Topsy Turvy
Google Wave: Enormous Buzz
Possible Google Wave Applications And Innovations
Google Wave Architecture: Designed For Mass, Massive, Global Innovation
The Google Wave Architecture
Google Wave Ripples
Is Google Wave Social Enough To Challenge Facebook, Twitter?
Of Waves And Tsunamis
Google Wave: Wave Of The Future?
Google Wave: If Email Were Invented Today
From The Google Blogs
1 Wave Sandbox, 5 Hours, 17 Awesome Demos
The Making of the Sudoku Gadget
Google Wave API Office Hours
Google Wave team heads to Google Developer Days in Asia
Introducing the Google Wave APIs: what can you build?
Went Walkabout. Brought back Google Wave.
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