A Summer Day at Google
by, Dan Richards, WG’09
Strategic Partner Development Manager (Intern)
I spent the summer on the Local/Core Content group in the Content Partnerships team (http://contentcentral.blogspot.com/). As you may or may not have heard, Google is not a “media” company, in that they don’t “create” content - they just aggregate it from different sources and make it accessible and usable to the user. Whenever Google can’t access certain content by crawling websites, that’s when the Content Partnership team steps in to negotiate deals with content providers and the like. My role within this team was part business development, part strategy. It was a very busy summer, but very enjoyable and fulfilling. A typical day for me looked something like this:
8:00 - While Google provides free shuttle services to most areas from San Francisco to San Jose and up the East Bay, I lived in Los Altos Hills, which meant I would hop on the VTA (public bus) for a 20 min ride to the Googleplex.
8:30 - Arrive and get settled at my desk. I was usually the first one from my group there at this time.
8:35 - Head over to Cafe Moma for pancakes with strawberry syrup and whipped cream (which quickly turned into cold cereal and a banana after I gained 5 lbs in my first couple weeks). I’d usually take breakfast back to my desk and start sifting through emails. I worked with quite a few folks in Europe and Asia, so often had emails from them waiting for me when I got to work in the morning.
9:00 - I’d usually spend the next hour or so trying to make a dent in my to-do list. Some days it seemed that I’d check one thing off and three new things got added automatically.
10:00 - The next hour could be spent sitting down with a product manager, legal counsel, or marketing manager to discuss a certain project. Google is a VERY collaborative environment, and I learned that if you don’t reach out and work with as many different people as possible, you’ll get left behind.
11:00 - Late morning is usually a good time to get some BizDev related partner calls in - whether they’re on the West Coast or East Coast, it’s usually a good time to chat with people. I’d either make calls from my desk or reserve a private room on Google’s elaborate (but easy to use) internal network.
12:30 - This was always the toughest part of the day. Tough because I’d have to decide in which of the 20+ world class cafes I’d eat lunch that day. Each cafe has their own theme - from Pinxto (everything made from organic ingredients grown within ~150 miles of Google) to Andale (Larry and Sergey’s favorite Mexican restaurant that they convinced to expand from Palo Alto to the Googleplex). The best part about the free lunch is that it makes it so easy to sit down with people from around the company. My weeks often filled up quickly with lunch appointments with different people. Whether I was working on a project with them or just wanted to learn about the next version of their product, people were very accommodating. It’s a very open culture and people love to chat over free (and tasty) food.
2:00 - More meetings over the next couple hours. From one-on-one’s with your boss (or bosses, in my case) to weekly team meetings to more project-centric meetings, early afternoon was usually the best time for this. Google has a great video conferencing network with all their offices around the world. I could reserve almost any conference room in Mountian View and be “face to face” with someone in the Dublin office, or in the next building over, within seconds.
4:00 - This is where the “real work” began for me. I’d usually try to block out this time to hack away at my to-do list, make some more calls and send some more emails. Sometimes I’d book a private room in order to avoid distractions.
6:00 - At this point, I’d either be wrapping things up and heading home or would grab dinner at one of the above-mentioned cafes and stick around for another hour, depending on how busy things were. I’d try to hit the gym before I went home, but that happened with much less frequency as the summer progressed. I convinced myself that riding the beach cruisers from building to building for meetings, along with the occasional mid-day basketball game, was enough exercise for me.
All in all, it was a great summer. It was busier and a bit more strenuous then I expected, but it was very rewarding and worthwhile. I learned a lot, received great feedback from my managers, and was happy with how it turned out. And if anyone ever tells you there’s no such thing as a “free lunch”, don’t believe them!