Yesterday Google had their opening party for the new Sydney office. They sent out invitations to the broader community and had about 300 people turn up, most of whom were of the technical variety 🙂 I had a fun night chatting to loads of SLUGgers, researchers, and of course the Googlers. It was probably one of the most diverse technical crowd gatherings in Sydney, which meant a load of fringe people got to meet each other.
Google have something like 15 engineers in the local office (mostly Google Maps people) and they flew in 15 engineers from their New York office who were fun and interesting. Google’s office is, very cool to say the least. Bright colours, loads of room, nice hardware, a pool table and excellent kitchen. It actually reminded me of when I worked at OneTel, whose offices were Feng Shui compatible (seriously!) with loads of fish tanks, bright colours and a spacious work environment.
Google are very proactively getting more women into Google, and it was interesting to talk to Lars about some of the rationale behind that:
1) they want the best engineers out there, female and male
2) they want their workplace to reflect the diversty of ideas and approaches in the global community
3) they want a great workplace that is comfortable and fun for everyone
Pretty sensible really 🙂 They had some cool Google girl shirts, and I’ll wear mine to the next slug meeting 🙂
Hats off to you Google, I can see why it has become an engineer’s Mecca and it is great to have a team on the ground in Sydney. We look forward to your engineers participating in SLUG and the local technical community 🙂