From the Evansville Courier & Press and the Meade County Messenger
Dig if you will this workplace: Swimming pools, free health food in the cafeteria, barbershop and doctors' offices, pets allowed.
Wait, come back, you can touch up your resume in a minute.
First let's talk about the "Googleplex," California headquarters of the Internet search engine Google, which is to Yahoo! what Macs are to PCs.
(Everyone says Google is the best search engine in the world, but there's a big secret: every time I search for the same keywords on Google and Yahoo!, I get the exact same results.)
I googled the Google headquarters after I saw it on "Oprah" the other day. Not only is the "Googleplex" the coolest name for a place since I dubbed my college dorm the Love Shack, there are a googleplex of reasons why it'd be a great place to work.
You can shoot pool. You can do your laundry. You can play video games. You can play foosball, the most realistic soccer simulation ever.
They have a baby grand piano. They play roller hockey twice a week in the parking lot, "Clerks"-style.
To think I was blown away by the break rooms at my first jobs at Revco and McDonalds. And 10-minute breaks were the best things since chocolate shakes.
When I used to help Dad cut tobacco, I was just grateful he had a jug of water.
A lot of company executives are reaching out to make life easier for their workers--flexible schedules, day cares, not bankrupting employee retirement accounts and then moving to Tahiti--and it's about time. I'd say most people spend the majority of their time at work, on their way to work or getting ready for work.
I've always thought the French work schedule was as seductive as French guys try to be--a maximum 35-hour work week, at least five weeks of vacation every year, and a dozen or so public holidays, according to Websites I found on Google (and Yahoo!).
In America, most companies that give paid holidays have between five and seven days a year, and most of those are between November and January (one of Martin Luther King's underappreciated accomplishments is being the only guy born in January to get his birthday celebrated so close to Christmas).
If anything, Google might be taking their perks a little too far. I love my dog, but if I took her to work there, she would bark at everyone who walked by and beg them for their free food.
I'm happy with my company's free Coke days, and they have nurses come check us out regularly. We've even got a shower here, but the idea of using it kind of weirds me out.
At a previous job a couple of years ago, I worked with a woman who had interviewed at the Courier & Press, and she was still taken with the employee exercise room downstairs.
I also think that room is cool. I plan to try it out one day.
But there is one extra way Google rules: I'm sure for employees there, spending all day surfing the Internet is encouraged.
Columnist Jacob Bennett knows what he's been told at jacobmbennett@hotmail.com, you've got to work to feed your soul. But he can't do this all on his own. He knows he's no Superman.
Dig if you will this workplace: Swimming pools, free health food in the cafeteria, barbershop and doctors' offices, pets allowed.
Wait, come back, you can touch up your resume in a minute.
First let's talk about the "Googleplex," California headquarters of the Internet search engine Google, which is to Yahoo! what Macs are to PCs.
(Everyone says Google is the best search engine in the world, but there's a big secret: every time I search for the same keywords on Google and Yahoo!, I get the exact same results.)
I googled the Google headquarters after I saw it on "Oprah" the other day. Not only is the "Googleplex" the coolest name for a place since I dubbed my college dorm the Love Shack, there are a googleplex of reasons why it'd be a great place to work.
You can shoot pool. You can do your laundry. You can play video games. You can play foosball, the most realistic soccer simulation ever.
They have a baby grand piano. They play roller hockey twice a week in the parking lot, "Clerks"-style.
To think I was blown away by the break rooms at my first jobs at Revco and McDonalds. And 10-minute breaks were the best things since chocolate shakes.
When I used to help Dad cut tobacco, I was just grateful he had a jug of water.
A lot of company executives are reaching out to make life easier for their workers--flexible schedules, day cares, not bankrupting employee retirement accounts and then moving to Tahiti--and it's about time. I'd say most people spend the majority of their time at work, on their way to work or getting ready for work.
I've always thought the French work schedule was as seductive as French guys try to be--a maximum 35-hour work week, at least five weeks of vacation every year, and a dozen or so public holidays, according to Websites I found on Google (and Yahoo!).
In America, most companies that give paid holidays have between five and seven days a year, and most of those are between November and January (one of Martin Luther King's underappreciated accomplishments is being the only guy born in January to get his birthday celebrated so close to Christmas).
If anything, Google might be taking their perks a little too far. I love my dog, but if I took her to work there, she would bark at everyone who walked by and beg them for their free food.
I'm happy with my company's free Coke days, and they have nurses come check us out regularly. We've even got a shower here, but the idea of using it kind of weirds me out.
At a previous job a couple of years ago, I worked with a woman who had interviewed at the Courier & Press, and she was still taken with the employee exercise room downstairs.
I also think that room is cool. I plan to try it out one day.
But there is one extra way Google rules: I'm sure for employees there, spending all day surfing the Internet is encouraged.
Columnist Jacob Bennett knows what he's been told at jacobmbennett@hotmail.com, you've got to work to feed your soul. But he can't do this all on his own. He knows he's no Superman.
0 comments:
Post a Comment