Google, London: Week 1
Last week I started an internship in London with Google.
London
Coming to London has been something of a culture shock.
On Saturday 15th July, I worked a fifteen hour day at Newport Show, my local agricultural show, where I sold plants grown by my parents. Newport Show exudes parochial charm; it’s the homeliest of the locations at which we ply our green wares because not only is it under five miles from our house, but also because pretty much every resident of Newport seems duty-bound to attend.
Consequently, one spends one’s day talking to an array of acquaintances in between the usual sale of plants, evoking a nostalgic small-town atmosphere in anyone aware that he will be renouncing it for London the next day.
When I did just that, therefore, the contrast was stark. London, with its integrated public transport network, gave me a bewildering number of routes to get to work, and an even more confusing number of ways to pay for it. I eventually opted for one of the rather clever Oyster cards.
As well as being smart, however, this small piece of microchip-endowed plastic is scary, because with a single wave over a small, yellow, rubbery pad, you get apparently limitless access to a World of public transport opportunity. It just doesn’t feel like you’re spending money.
The other feature of this bustling metropolis is the sheer weight of people. No combination of mitigating factors (“it’s the end of the line”, “it’s Sunday”, “it’s the evening”, et cetera) ever seem to dilute the crowds here below a level significantly in excess of my rural market town expectations.
However, my attitudes have clearly adapted quickly to this new environment; having attended a party in Monmouth at the weekend, a walk down a street in Newport (Gwent, this time, not my home town) brought a strangely Londoner-esque disappointment at the swathe of closed shops. This is the 24-hour society of the 21st century…so why isn’t everywhere open like it would be here?!
Coming to Google has been something of a culture shock.
I’ve never worked in a business larger than a Maize Maze combined with farm shop back home, and consequently the air-conditioned corporate environment, resplendent with ergonomic chairs, bean bags and smart orange juicing machine is slightly beyond my experience.
The confusion is compounded by the fact that the Google ambience is a far cry from my stereotype of City business, which a large number of companies seem to have left behind in the 1980s. I can get away with wearing shorts to work most days, and have only been called upon to wear a shirt and trousers (no tie, of course) on the one day so far that I have had a meeting with an important client. The ad agency at which this meeting was held did not adhere to any such rigorous dress code even under these circumstances.
There’s also free food everywhere, and a large atrium filled with bean bags, cushions and other odd seating and general lazing apparatus.
As for work, I’m in marketing—yet another culture shock—which has so far comprised analysis of advertising performance, investigating a long list of locations on Google Maps and Google Earth to assess their suitability for use in a forthcoming promotion, and building a Google Maps mash-up for my parents by way of investigating the product (the Google Maps API, which allows webmasters and bloggers to create smart web-based, highly customisable maps just by copying and pasting JavaScript) that it will be one of my projects to promote.
The conclusion
My aim over the course of the next six weeks (having already completed a week of my seven interning) is to work out whether I would like to spend some, most, all, or none of the rest of my life working in London and raking in vast quantities of cash, either for Google or otherwise.
Having never lived in London or worked in a corporate setting before, I have no idea whether or not either will be desirable.
A week and a day in, I’m probably closer to an answer than I have been before…but not close enough that I feel capable of writing anything coherent about it.
August 5th, 2006 at 07:50
How lucky you are to sample such a diverse array of experiences!