CDO-Wide Expense Management Policies

1. Year-End PTO: As announced on CEC, Cisco U.S./Canada offices will shut down from December 29 - January 2 as part of the company’s expense management initiative.
· This mandate applies to the vast majority of CDO employees. Management will notify specific CDO teams that have customer-related exceptions during the year-end shutdown period including support for Technical Assistance Center (TAC) and Customer Assurance Program (CAP) teams.
· We also strongly encourage all employees to take additional time off from December 22nd through December 24th or by the end of Q2. Taking additional PTO beyond the four mandated days can significantly contribute to your business unit cost savings and provides a well-deserved break for you.

2. Holiday Activities: All CDO teams are encouraged to celebrate the holidays, but try to find creative ways that result in no cost to the company. There should be no Business Group, Technology Group or Business Unit-funded holiday parties.

3. Hiring: A number of new Cisco-wide hiring policies were announced this week. These policies are intended to ensure that movement of talent continues to take place in strategic areas to the company.
* On Monday, November 17th all open requisitions were cancelled; CDO requisitions can be reopened with Development Council member approval. [REDACTED NAME OF AN EMPLOYEE HERE]
* Replacement or backfill positions will be approved at the discretion of the Development Council Business Group lead based on revised budget affordability.
* College recruiting programs in the US, India and China are not subject to the above requirements. They will continue to maintain CDO's strategic relationships with designated universities and to provide access to candidates.

4. Travel: Travel is an area where CDO spends a significant amount each year and where all employees can make a significant impact. You should expect reductions in the following areas based on revised budget affordability:
* Support for tradeshows in accordance with revised Marketing requirements
* Travel required for participation in standards forums

5. Project-Related Costs: Outside services, equipment expense, capital purchases and prototypes are another large area of expense management focus in CDO. Specific spend allocation on each of these areas will be managed by the Business Group to fit within revised budgets.

6. Training: As a Development Council, we remain committed to the development of our employees, even during challenging economic times. To do so, in adherence with Cisco policy, we are requiring that all training take place locally. We also ask that all CDO-employees look for ways to maximize training budgets in the following ways:
* Revisit and reprioritize development plans with your manager before you sign up for training with an associated cost. This will save on potential cancellation fees later. Refer to the CDO website for more training guidelines and ways you can continue your development and save money.

I'm not a Valleywag regular but felt compelled to write after Blake & Sue's latest cost-cutting shenanigans.

After filling up my salad box as usual, I head over to the cashier to pay my usual 4.25, a fair price for a smallish-medium salad whose cost is supposedly company subsidised (that's what they told me when I joined a few months ago). Today, however, I had to put my take out box on a scale since Yahoo is charging by weight now. So my 4.25 salad cost me $7.75 (I was an idiot for using the dense ranch dressing). What an excellent way to further kill morale during such trying times at the company. Best of all, Management decided to keep this secret from employees! They could have mentioned it at the all hands but they're spineless bitches who couldn't even take the issue of the cafe head-on.

I never thought a management team could be so stupid to strip away these perks that increase productivity when there are many larger costs that can be cut first. After this, it wouldn't be surprising for them to stop offering coffee or charging for the water. Luckily they're not charging people to use the bathroom as the $.50/flush proposal got nixed at the last board meeting (although the proposal may be revisited at any time).

Anyway, I just needed to rant because I cannot believe a firm would be so stupid to cut back on perks that improve productivity while wasting money on shit like a Halloween party and a bunch of banners touting the greatness of Yahoo around the Sunnyvale campus (and the door props...gimme a break). Not to mention the killer haloween party. And chauferring Sue in from the North Bay each time she comes in. Gosh this place IS as bad as the stuff you read!

The integrated LifeConnections center provides our employees with a holistic model for health care delivery with a full range of options. Studies show that by bringing together health care, fitness, and child care in one location, this results in greater employee life balance through less time away from work and reduced need to drive to other service locations, as well as a positive return on investment for Cisco."

The current fitness centers located in Buildings SJ-6 and SJ-L will end operations on October 31.

For information about the current fitness centers in SJ-L and SJ-6, please see http://wwwin.cisco.com/wpr/fitness/sj/

The new Life Connections Fitness Center, Building SJ-Q at 3571 North First Street, will open on November 4 at 4:30pm.

LifeConnections Fitness Center hours will be the same as our current fitness centers; Mon-Thu - (5:30am-9pm), Fri - (5:30am-8pm).

Members are encouraged to sneak a peak of the new facility and beat the rush on pre-registering - Monday, October 27 - Wednesday, October 29 from 10am-4pm.

Membership dues for the new Fitness Center will be $20 per month for employees, $30 per month for contractors or $2 per day for badged guests. more...

Cisco is subsidizing 90% of the cost for these improvements, sharing only 10% with employees.

Regular Cisco Employees can receive the first three months of membership for free by taking the Health Connections Personal Health Assessment by November 30.

You are invited to a grand opening event November 3

All are encouraged to attend the grand opening event on Monday, November 3 from 11 a.m. to 2 p.m. at Building SJ-Q.

From: "Kim Huskey"
Date: October 28, 2008 12:44:03 PM EDT
To: [REDACTED]@google.com
Subject: [Everyone-ny] NYC Cafe and Microkitchen Updates

Hi Everyone,

Changes have been made recently to programs throughout our company to ensure cost effectiveness and consistency across offices. In New York City, our food service team has closely examined cafe usage, food consumption and labor costs to find areas where efficiency can be improved without compromising food quality and nutrition. We would like to announce the following NYC-specific changes to the food service program:

* Meals The below hours were determined to be the most cost effective to serve meals based on traffic flow to cafes.
* Breakfast will be served from 8:30-9:30am (formerly 8:00-9:30am) and the menu will be simplified. 
* Lunch will be served from 11:30am-2:00pm (formerly 11:30-2:30pm).
* Dinner will be served from 6:30-8:00pm (formerly 6:00-8:00pm).   Please note that dinner is provided for those working late in the office and is not intended to be taken home.
* Microkitchens
* Those of you who have been around for a while know that the microkitchens started for a variety of good reasons, including a genuine desire to make it easy for folks to grab some food while working long and/or odd hours.  While we are staying true to that original purpose, we are also looking for ways to be smarter, more cost-efficient, and more earth-friendly in the usage and product offerings of our microkitchens.   
* There will be changes to the selection of snacks in the microkitchens.  We will be sending a survey to Googlers in NYC soon asking for them to vote on their favorite snacks. 
* Socials and Guest Policy
* Afternoon tea on Tuesdays will be suspended. Similar to Mountain View, there may be occasional surprise "snack attacks" in the future.
* On those occasions when a senior executive would like to speak at TGIAF, temps, contractors, vendors and guests will be restricted from attending, for confidentiality reasons.
* To maintain consistency with other Google offices, we are going to adopt the guest policy announced in MV last month.  Please see below for more detail about this policy.

We look forward to continuing to provide Googlers with a great meal experience every day. Questions, comments or concerns can be sent to [REDACTED]@google.com. 

Thank you,
Kim Huskey
Food Services Manager Northeast and Canada

Off The Grid's closure is the harbinger of more cuts, a source within Google's kitchens we've nicknamed "Deep Fried" tells us. The building, 2350 Bayshore, is also having its "micro kitchen" snack stations closed. A large number of workers in the building were contractors, Deep Fried says, some of whom are losing their temporary jobs at Google. The closure also leaves a large area of Google's campus without breakfast service.

Food is just one area where Google is slashing costs; under recently hired CFO Patrick Pichette, Google has been having a series of meetings about eliminating expenses, and Googlers have been implementing the cuts with the same slapdash speed with which it rolls out new websites.

Google executives gave food-service operator Bon Appétit sharp budget cuts this year, which has only worsened the already troubled relationship between the companies. Google eliminated dinner at one café earlier this year. But the closure of Off The Grid was sudden, coming after a meeting between Bon Appétit executives and Derek Rupp, the café's executive chef, Deep Fried writes:

The whole staff came into the cafe and sat before the corporate panel and we were told OTG would close, effective immediately. Bombshell. They had their menus for the week planned out, their pantries were fully stocked, everyone working at full tilt, and suddenly they were told it was all over. Nobody expected it. Derek was stunned - OTG was his baby. Some were crying. They were assured from corporate that if an alternative position could not be obtained within the Google account then Bon Apetit would move them to a nearby account. Oh and by the way some may be let go. If so, two weeks' paid severance.

Google has, to Deep Fried's knowledge, never closed a café on its main campus before. The food cuts could be a harbinger to further cost-cutting; Deep Fried has heard that the building might be put up for sublease. To date, Google has aggressively sought to expand its office space in Mountain View; a sublet, too, would be an all but unprecedented retrenchment.

Other cuts are being made throughout Google. Glacéau SmartWater, once commonly stocked in Googleplex fridges, is gone, though that removal was spun as an environmental move to drop bottled drinks. Deep Fried observes:

I think we are doing a good job of keeping this from the Googlers. But should it really be kept from them? Shouldn't they know the real reason we don't have SmartWater is because we don't have the money for it? Shouldn't they know that even a powerhouse like Google is being hit? Maybe they would complain less.

Sunnily optimistic Googlers, convinced of their ability to better the world, complaining? Google has lost more than just a café. It has lost a bit of its innocence.

(Photo by Jatbar.com)

Not just the bash in San Mateo, but also festivities for Yahoo's offices in Los Angeles, New York, and around the world. Oh, and more for the divisions. "Each department below Jerry has a party, so you end up going to at least four parties, all for the same company," says our source. For Yahoo, this is just business as usual.
"The company leadership is in denial and there are parties every week," our source continues.

If a Hollywood producer were to order up a company born out of California's touchy-feely, you're-okay-I'm-okay self-esteem movement, Dreamtown's best screenwriters would be hard pressed to come up with a more risible example than Yahoo, a company devoted to celebrating itself, at the expense of doing anything worth celebrating. Yahoos may not be doing OC-80, but they're addicted to fun for fun's sake — conveniently paid by shareholders. Bread and circuses; but four days after the circus is over, many Yahoos will lose their bread.

(Photo by isaacschlueter)

Hello everyone,

There has been a lot of concern and debate on campus about abuse of the guest privilege in the cafes.  We wanted to take the opportunity to review our guest policies and ask for your help in enforcing them.

1 - Every Google employee and intern in Mountain View is allowed two meals per month in our cafes for personal guests. 

We understand that there may be an occasional month when you have special visitors in town and you exceed two personal guests (4 family members visiting from Omaha?) but we trust you not to exceed more than an average of 2 personal guests per month. 

2 - After reviewing the number of guests on campus each day, we have decided to limit the privilege of bringing personal guests on campus to part- and full-time employees and interns only. 

We know that this will be disappointing to our temps, vendors and contractors, but we feel that it is a necessary step to alleviate the over-crowding and congestion on campus.

3 - Everyone is responsible for signing in guests (business or personal) at lobby reception and all guests are required to wear visitor badges visibly while on campus. 

This holds true for lunch and dinner.  Much of the abuse of the guest meal privilege in Mountain View is occurring at dinner time.  To help us maintain security, please refrain from bringing guests on campus on weekends and late evenings. 

4 - Prepared meals in containers are provided at dinner time for people who are working late on campus. 

We know that there has been a lack of clarity about this, but the intention of this meal service is not for people to grab meals "to go" on their way out the door, or to "stock up" on multiple meals.

5 - Anyone bringing a group of business guests to a cafe for lunch should bring them after 1 pm to avoid our peak lunch hour.

To help us to monitor and enforce these guest policies, we will be adding a simple step to the process of signing in guests on campus beginning later this year.  When visitors sign in at reception, they will be asked to identify themselves as a personal or business guest, and to indicate whether they are having a meal in one of our cafes.  If they are, the word "MEAL" will appear on their visitor badge. 

Our on-site meals are intended to foster community building among employees.  We want there to be enough room in our cafes for employees and teams to enjoy meals together.  Abuse of the guest privilege creates over-crowding and congestion, at great expense to the company.  This is an incredible perk that we benefit from each day.  Please do your part to use this privilege appropriately and honestly.

Many thanks,

Laszlo

(Photo by blmurch)

Undocumented workers chop vegetables and wash dishes throughout the food industry; why would Google's cafes be any different? The hypocrisy of America's immigration rules isn't the issue, though; it's the foolishness of Google's management.

Even if everybody does it, Google executives claim that it runs its business differently — and better. Claiming the moral high ground may prove harder now. Google's chief people officer, Laszlo Bock, has lobbied Congress vigorously to expand the number of H-1B visas the company gets. Getting caught with an undocumented nanny has torpedoed many political careers. The next time he appears in Washington, D.C., don't you think Bock will get pointed questions from self-righteously huffy Congressmen why he doesn't think American citizens are fit to serve his employees' meals?

Google, which has been feuding with Bon Appétit over the running of its kitchens for months, may be addressing the problem. "There are rampant rumors in all the kitchens that Guggenheim [sic] will be taking over the account come December," Deep Fried tells us — actually referring to Guckenheimer, a less highfalutin' food-service competitor to Bon Appétit. "Everyone is paranoid that when [Guckenheimer] comes in all the undocumented workers will get the can."

If that happens, who will serve Googlers the free meals they've become accustomed to? We suggest Larry, Sergey, and Eric don hairnets and gloves.

(Photo by midom)

The trouble started when Google hired John Dickman as its director of food operations. Dickman is married to Lisa McEuen, an executive at Bon Appétit. At the time, Bon Appétit and Google were two of the largest buyers of organic and sustainable food in the region; by picking up Google as a client, Bon Appétit gained considerable purchasing power. A source in Google's kitchens says that Dickman was "the reason Bon Appétit got the Google contract."

But in exchange, Bon Appétit, a division of Compass Group, got a very testy client. A former Google chef who had his own ideas about how to run the cafes profitably said he tried to get founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin and CEO Eric Schmidt interested, but they didn't listen "because I didn't have a Stanford degree."

Google's ethics cops have never looked askance at, say, Schmidt hiring his girlfriend for a high-profile PR gig, or Brin getting Google to invest in his wife's startup. But Dickman's marriage to a Bon Appétit executive raised eyebrows, and he left the company in January.

Two top chefs followed him out the door. Josef Desimone went to Facebook, in March. Dickman himself went to Apple, and Nate Keller, a protégé of Google's first chef, Charlie Ayers, followed him there. Both Desimone and Keller took several members of the kitchen staff with them. "All management staff has quit within the last three months," says a source at Google. That may be an exaggeration, but if so, not by much.

One issue that's been underplayed: The behavior of rank-and-file Googlers. "Pride is all cooks and dishwashers have," says a former Google chef. But Googlers, whose sense of self-aggrandized entitlement is already legendary in the Valley, have been taking out their frustrations on the people who dish out their food. Kitchen staffers are "invisible" to them, says a Google food worker — except when they somehow displease Googlers who expect free meals and servile deference, too.

Google's cafes have always been at the heart of its PR strategy, helping to portray the company as generous to employees, dedicated to doing things differently, and caring about Mother Earth. Google PR director David Krane took on the replacement of original chef Charlie Ayers as the task he worked on in the 20-percent time Google gives employees to work on side projects. I can't remember the number of times Krane cajoled me to enjoy a free meal, courtesy of Google.

He wouldn't want me there now. A Bon Appétit executive said in May that the company was planning to drop Google as a client. Arrogant, tightfisted, and argumentative, the Googlers were more trouble than the food-service contract was worth. Even so, Bon Appétit has been scrambling to patch things up.

"The two founders of Bon Appétit come on site at least once a week," says a Googler. "Other representatives from Bon Appétit headquarters are on site every day — as visitors. It's a very sticky situation. The kitchen staff isn't being told anything. When dinner is cut how many jobs will be cut, too? The thing that really gets me is that the Googlers have no clue and will be asking us questions when dinner and other programs stop. They won't know the truth either."

The company seems uninterested in letting Googlers know the truth. It's telling that Google PR won't go on the record to deny the cuts, though they're happy to persuade reporters on background that the cuts are limited. A spokeswoman, conveniently unnamed, told CNBC's Jim Goldman that the company had no idea where the rumor came from.

Here's an idea for Google PR: Go down to a kitchen, and talk to the people who actually make the food you love to eat while chatting up reporters. They seem to be better informed than you are.

(Photo by Jeromy Henry/Fortune)

Last year, when we aired the mildest speculation about Google cutting back on free food, commenters were outraged. Google has long milked its cafeterias for their publicity value; company executives have crowed about the company's resistance to recessions and its commitment to coddling its employees. Founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin even promised shareholders they'd add perks, rather than cut them.

In 2004, they wrote:

We provide many unusual benefits for our employees, including meals free of charge ... We are careful to consider the long term advantages to the company of these benefits. Expect us to add benefits rather than pare them down over time. We believe it is easy to be penny wise and pound foolish with respect to benefits that can save employees considerable time and improve their health and productivity.

What went wrong? For one, Google handed its restaurants over to an outside management company, Bon Appétit, which runs many Valley corporate cafeterias. The change did not go well, with Google and Bon Appétit constantly clashing — even over minor things, like whether kitchen workers could use Google's foosball tables. Star executive chefs like Nate Keller and Josef Desimone left. Desimone, who was recruited by Facebook, took many chefs with him.

The departures left Google's kitchens understaffed even as it undertook an expansion of its cafes to Alza Plaza, an office complex close to the Googleplex it acquired last year. Bon Appétit simply didn't have the staff to keep offering dinner, and Google didn't want to foot the bill to hire more.

Could this all stem from a change of heart by Google's formerly perk-crazy founders? Sergey Brin is said to have complained about employees' overweening sense of entitlement to "bottled water and M&Ms," a comment company flacks denied he made. Regardless of what Brin precisely said, it makes sense that he'd rethink his generosity. Brin has made his billions already. Spending to keep his employees motivated at startup levels won't pay off. Tightening the belt to keep profit margins high? That, and not free dinners, will preserve Brin's outlandish wealth.

The savings from cutting dinner, as well as some snacks, should be substantial. By one estimate, Google spends $7,500 a year on food per employee. But the phrase "per employee" is used loosely here. Employees often took their spouses and children out to dinner at the cafes, or wrapped up food to take home for the family — on shareholders' dime.

Fine, some Googlers abused the perk. Even then, consider the message Google is sending to employees: Go home and have dinner with your families. What will Thunder Parley, Google's self-appointed in-house food critic, say? This is a slashing of benefits Google executives can't sugarcoat.

(Photo by Justin Sullivan/Getty Images))

I think Google approached daycare the same way they did their in-house cafeterias — with an assumption, born of sheerest hubris, that an age-old business needed reinventing, and that the brains at Google could provide a value-add to a matter on which they really knew nothing at all.

What they forgot to consider: If you mess up a meal, you can throw it out and start over tomorrow. People take their children rather more seriously than their lunches.

That said, what Googlers are really upset about is not the outcome, but the process. The old Google culture was one where anyone's idea counted, and if you did the work and proved your point with numbers, you'd be listened to. Here, the process of gathering input seems to have been a farce, tacked on at the end for appearance's sake to a top-down decision.

Also ludicrous: Google is spending time and money on something it doesn't even advertise as a perk. Why is it in the childcare business again? It's not to attract talented employees; if anything, this "privilege" of spending too much money on needlessly luxurious childcare might drive employees away. So no one's well served: Not employees, not shareholders, and certainly not Google users.

This must seem utterly ludicrous to anyone not in the airtight bubble of Larry and Sergey's inner circle. In that rarefied atmosphere, "don't be evil" has become confused with "we can do no wrong."

The May memo, promising rates wouldn't rise 75 percent:
The June price hikes:

Wojcicki has modest tastes in cars: She chauffeurs her kids in a Honda Odyssey minivan. But when it comes to spending Google's money, she is far less thrifty. Wojcicki, an early Google employee, was dissatisfied with Google's Kinderplex, which has been run by an outside firm, CCLC. CCLC is used by many companies in the Valley, including Cisco and Electronic Arts, but it wasn't good enough for Wojcicki, who pulled her children out, and set about designing a new Google-owned facility, with a blank check from Brin.

The Kinderplex is losing its lease this month. The Woods and the Wetlands, as Google's new child-care facilities are known, are implausibly plush — and proved hard to staff until Brin and cofounder Larry Page were dissuaded from rejecting caregivers who didn't have a 3.5 GPA from a top school.

The price is likewise out of sight. One of the new centers has 18,500 square feet for 80 children — or 230 sq. ft. per child. Minimum licensing requirements are 35 sq. ft. of usable floor space per child; a more generous recommendation is 50 sq. ft. per child. Even allowing for some space for other uses, that seems extravagant. Brin told employees that the new centers cost $40,000 a year per child to operate — more than the roughly $30,000 a year Google planned to charge employees, but also far above market rates.

That number was also a 75 percent increase over Kinderplex's near-market fees, and the figure sent Googlers, ever driven by data, into a frenzy of mathematical modeling. Detailed proposals for reducing the cost of the centers came out — and were ignored.

Google's chief child-care officer sent an email out a few weeks ago promising that prices wouldn't be raised 75 percent. Sure enough, they weren't. Instead, Google's head of HR, Laszlo Bock, told employees earlier this week that prices would be raised a mere ... 70 percent.

The monthly fee for a preschooler is rising from $1,070 to $1,710; for an infant, it's rising from $1,470 to $2,390. At those prices, one parent says, if you had two kids, you could afford to just hire a nanny instead.

For the likes of Wojcicki, a top Google executive and an IPO lottery winner, those costs are inconsequential; having a luxurious child-care center near the Google campus is more important. But for workaday Googlers, especially those who didn't join the company before the IPO, those prices are out of sight. Even Bock, Google's chief people officer who was saddled with the unfortunate task of explaining Wojcicki's decisions, has told fellow Googlers he will take his children elsewhere rather than pay the new rates.

We hear that one top Google lawyer has quit over the price hike — not because she couldn't afford it, but because the way Brin's inner circle decided it, without consulting the data. (This departure may come back to haunt the company.)

Google used to be a place where rank didn't matter: If the numbers showed you were right, Larry and Sergey could be persuaded. That Brin let his sister-in-law's wealthy whims rule over the interests of hundreds, if not thousands, of working Googlers shows that Google is becoming yet another big company, with an insular clique at its heart. What it proves is that at Google today, it's not what you know. It's who you know.

How lucky for Wojcicki's kids that her mother has friends in high places. How unfortunate that other parents don't. One can't fault Wojcicki for wanting good things for her children. But doing so with Google's money, creating a luxury service affordable only to top executives and IPO lottery winners? That's inexcusable.

What we hear from Googlers is that supervisors are cracking down on use of 20 percent time when employees' main projects are behind schedule. A sensible management move, but against the spirit of 20 percent time, which was meant to liberate creative employees from meddling middle management.

As well, Googlers are finding it harder to get their side projects approved. A mess of side projects — Google This, Google That, Google Whatever — launched and then ignored by users, led Google to tighten up the criteria for what Googlers can work on.

The end result: Ideas like Gmail Labs. Googlers can innovate, but only in tiny sandboxes; on core products, not on big new ideas. Only Larry and Sergey, and their favored minions, get to dream big dreams about overturning the telecom industry or revolutionizing the world's energy infrastructure, or whatever the founders' power-mad geek fantasies are this week.

Which means Google is increasingly just another company. And 20 percent time? A dressed-up version of the office suggestion box.

• Why is Google special? 5 reasons:
• Great perks — gourmet lunches, dinners, spas, daycare, laundry
• Brilliant minds at work — smart employees, guest speakers
• Innovative
• Fun, exciting, and energetic
• Who doesn't wanna work for #1?

• 5 reasons why Google employees are starting to leave:
• Commuting — people aren't as willing to commute as they once were, gas is over $4 dollars a gallon
• Stock troubles — growth doesn't last forever (YHOO — $108 in 2000 to $4.67 in 2002, Sun — $253.88 in 2000 to $10.36 in 2002)
• Google employees that joined post-IPO missed out on their big hit
• Products and services go through a full review process that can take months before the product is released to market
• Google was the revolution, it's not anymore

Looks like you guys were correct about Yahoo's SF shuttles — today we switched over to Bauer's Limo as the shuttle vendor. Day 1 so far has been a sheer disaster: on almost every route the buses were at least 40 mins late. No contact numbers were available and the old shuttle dispatch was ringing Compass Transportation number. When the buses would show up, they'd have drivers who looked and drove as if it was their first day on the job — going at around 40mph on an empty stretch of 101. Apparently, the management at Yahoo hasn't grasped the main concept in IT: don't fix it if it ain't broke. Oh, and as far as promised working wifi, leather seats, power outlets, and cupholders — no will do: none of the buses had any of these amenities. I guess if this keeps up, most SF folks will start looking for jobs elsewhere, delivering the promised cost savings.

There are the perks: health benefits, free food, on-campus gyms, a beach volleyball field, the tech talks. Disneyland for three days. There's Google Search, Gmail, Google Reader, or Calendar. I felt proud to work at the company that built these. Every engineer gets either two 24" or one 30" monitor, as well as a company laptop. Then there's the community. In general, Googlers are a great bunch, and smart. But I am more a startup person than a big-company person. At a startup, every individual has a impact. As a recent Google employee, I would have never gotten rich there, even if the stock had doubled or tripled in price. Other Google-specific problems: it is unlikely to work in an area that one is passionate about. Another scale-related problem: Due to the size of the code base, it takes a long time to actually become productive at Google, which can be frustrating at times.

I get to cook whatever I want with the best quality food around. It's really great because we purchase everything top quality and everything we buy has a positive effect on the environment. We buy 100-percent sustainable, local ingredients. There is no pressure to make money on each plate, I don't have to cook what sells. Food is art and Google is my playground.

Be challenged at LinkedIn

We're looking for superb analytical minds of all levels to expand our small team that will build some of the most innovative products at LinkedIn.

No specific technical skills are required (we'll help you learn SQL, Python, and R). You should be extremely intelligent, have a quantitative background, and be able to learn quickly and work independently. This is the perfect job for someone who's really smart, driven, and extremely skilled at creatively solving problems. You'll learn statistics, data mining, programming, and product design, but you've gotta start with what we can't teach—intellectual sharpness and creativity.

This is a unique opportunity to help define and build a new product and engineering team within a mid-sized (230 employees), globally-recognized, energetic, ambitious, and profitable pre-IPO startup.
Projects

LinkedIn has amassed an incredible dataset, which we use to deliver highly personalized experiences for all our users. Our group also leverages our unique dataset, our creativity, and our skill with quantitative analysis to design and and build products like "people you may know", "who's viewed my profile", "jobs for you", and "company profiles". The environment here is optimized for speed—for example, within a week of the initial concept for "viewers of this profile also viewed", it was live on the site. There are many products along these lines that you can help improve, develop and invent. The work is both intellectually rewarding and delivers important value to our users. In addition, the work's varied: one week, you may be involved in predicting which ads a specific user is likely to click on (profile targeted advertising), and the next, working on a model that decides whether 'Webex, Inc' is the same as 'Webex Communications' (it isn't).
Why work at LinkedIn?

* Challenging work that matters
* LinkedIn is actually useful. Every day, people use LinkedIn to hire, find contacts, stay in touch, and manage their professional brand.
* Weekly releases mean your code will help someone find their dream job or former colleague right away
* "We tackle world-class engineering problems (of scale, performance, and security) with innovative architectural solutions" — Ruslan Belkin, Director of Engineering.

Rapidly growing business

* 21 million interconnected, elite professionals (that's more people than live in Australia)
* >1 million new users every month (that's like Fiji or Rhode Island)
* Profitable in 2007 ($75M-$100M expected in 2008)

Benefits

* Pre-IPO stock options
* 18 vacation days per year plus 8 company holidays
* Free catered lunches every day and a fully stocked kitchen
* Shuttles from San Francisco and CalTrain
* Onsite Gym
* Beautiful Mac workstations with 23" monitors
* Great colleagues to play Guitar Hero, Rock Band, and Four Square with.

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