The Boston Bing

A Google Summer

I’m at a cottage in Quebec.  Sitting by a fire.  In front of a picturesque lake.  I spent the summer in San Francisco.  California.  With a small company called Google.  They specialize in online search.  And recently I’ve spent a lot of time reflecting on the amazing things God will do with your life…if you let Him.

I’ll admit, I’ve been a delinquent blogger.  Things got busy at school last semester, I dropped the routine, and the posts stopped.  And, unfortunately, 4 months of my life have gone completely undocumented.  They exist only in memory.  Wow, that sounded dramatic.  But, as I have some time to reflect and relax before my 2^nd (and last) year at HBS gets fired up, I figured I’d get some of my thoughts down from an amazing summer.

Google.  The biggest internet phenomenon of our generation.  That’s a fair statement, right?  Facebook may disagree.  YouTube might try too, but Google owns YouTube so that wouldn’t quite work.  If I had to sum up my experience at Google in short description, it would be this:

Having finished an MBA Intern lunch (a free lunch from one of Google’s 18 cafes – sushi, Kobe beef burgers, fresh guacamole…you name it) with the Global VP of Sales, I hop on a colorful bike to ride it across Google’s huge campus (over 10 buildings, spread across the heart of Mountain View, CA).  My MacBook in tow, I pass a group of Googlers playing beach volleyball, enjoying the warm, zero-humidity, sunny weather.  Arriving at the next campus, I am greeted by some other Googlers engaged in a water-gun fight.  I park the bike (for the next employee to jump on when he/she needs it), and I head inside to make my next meeting, a video conference with Googlers in Japan, Dublin, Singapore, India and London.  We’re working to provide solutions for smaller advertising agencies, who utilize Google’s AdWords product to grow their clients’ businesses.  After the fast-paced, 30-minute global “VC” meeting, I head over to challenge a fellow MBA Intern in a fierce ping pong match.  And after some more meetings, emails, and work, I hop on the Google shuttle, which is equipped with free Wi-Fi, to head back to San Francisco (about 45 minutes north of Mountain View).

Okay, so I left most of the work parts out.  And the one I did mention doesn’t make much sense because you would never have an afternoon meeting with counterparts across the world – the time difference prevents that.  But, I did have plenty 7:30am meetings in order to accommodate global counterparts.

I actually spent the majority of my summer in Google’s San Francisco office, which is awesome.  Overlooking the Bay Bridge, it houses around 500 Googlers.  And, it’s growing every day.  (Google acquired a small tech company during the summer, and suddenly, we had more competition around the ping pong table.)

Google’s work culture is extremely interesting.  I would characterize it as young and fast-paced, huge and impersonal, friendly and humble, fun and innovative, positive and pet-friendly…performance driven but relaxed, informal but professional, transparent but secretive.  Google is very much in an awkward adolescence as a company.  It’s no longer a start-up (though the fast-paced, launch and iterate mindset makes it feel like one sometimes), but it’s still less than ten years old.  Google employees are as smart and talented as it gets. Having 25,000, Google is trying to figure out how to ease the tension between systems and structure and red-tape and inefficiency.  There’s endless opportunity within the company, but it’s easy to get lost in the shuffle.  Google is having major world impact, but it can be hard to measure your own.

I genuinely enjoyed my summer.  I worked on a project that had significant organizational impact, and I learned a ton about technology, organizational change, and leadership.  Walking into the summer, I had 3 goals: to gain global business perspective, to contribute to and learn from an excellent company, and to build relationships with talented people who challenge me.  I can say with all sincerity that I accomplished all three.  And it was really awesome to learn how a different company operates.  I could spend all day comparing and contrasting Google with Chick-fil-A.  Maybe that’s another blog post in the making…

So the big question now is, what’s next?  One more year at HBS, but then what? Where will I be one year from now?  With Chick-fil-A in Atlanta?  Google in San Francisco?  Somewhere else?  I’d lie if I told you that the uncertainty has never bothered me.  But, when I get overwhelmed, worried, or anxious about what the future holds, I always try and go back to one fact: God is for me.  He wants me to get where He wants me to go more than I want to get where He wants me to go.  So, I’ll keep walking with Him in this adventure, praying hard to discern where He needs me most.

Stay tuned for another post about my San Francisco city experience…

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