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Google's Best Perk — Transport
Reverse Gear writes "The New York Times has an interesting article about how different kinds of fringe benefits are starting to count more in the fight for the best brains in Silicon Valley. The article mainly focuses on Google's high-tech shuttle-bus system, which is quite extensive, covering a majority of the San Fransisco Bay area. The article quotes a transportation expert opining that Google's may be the largest such private system anywhere. One-quarter of the headquarters employees are now using it. A Google software engineer said: 'They could either charge for the food or cut it altogether... If they cut the shuttle, it would be a disaster.'"
With the high costs and difficulty of real-estate, a Google Comune may be a good idea.
Table-ized A.I.
Just think of the engineering discussions and the kinds of networking that would go on if they shared the transportation system. Intel employees could bounce ideas off of google ones creating a rather good synergy for building up servers, etc.. Really I don't know what company wouldn't want thier employees on that bus especially if google was a potential customer for them.
There's a free shuttle service in Emeryville, Ca (SFBay Area) that's funded by commercial property owners. Not only do the employees of the funders benefit but so does the surrounding community. Very nice!
Hopefully this means what the author is suggesting: That in the future a shuttle service will become an essential part of the benefits package offered by large employers. Imagine if other major employers such as Microsoft, Boeing, AMD and others implemented such programs in areas with otherwise high traffic like Seattle, Austin, and of course the SF bay area? It would reduce stress for everyone, alleviate traffic, reduce the demand and price for gas, reduce air pollution (and as a result health care costs), and make people realize that mass transit is a viable option for North America.
With a broadband connection you can work from home just as easily as from a cube. I've been doing that for years as an employee. As a moonlighting consultant I often work for people I have never seen in countries I have never been to.
Engineering is the art of compromise.
...doesn't it become a better idea to simply move Googleplex to a new location that isn't overcrowded, overpriced, etc.? Perhaps (in all seriousness) Google could move the headquarters to a more rural location. Employees could afford to live in mansions? Could drive to work without rush hour, etc. COMMS shouldn't be an issue...just run some fiber. Shoot, Google owns half the dark fiber (exaggerating of course) in the country anyway. Anyway, just thinking out loud.
As an interesting side note, the Michael Gaiman they quote is the son of author Neil Gaiman (The Sandman, Neverwhere, American Gods, etc.). I read the article and was surprised, because Neil mentioned his son choosing Google over Apple a month or two back on his blog. Sure enough, visited his blog after reading it and it is indeed him.
"There is no time, sir, at which ties do not matter," Jeeves, (Jeeves and the Impending Doom)
Here in Buenos Aires IBM does the same thing, as well as shuttles from and to some urban areas.
I'm guessing similar services are available in other places as well
--- I w00t, therefore I'm l33t.
Naive much? Or just trolling? Don't be ashamed to admit it.
the NPG electrode was replaced with carbon blac
As someone else note, Google's owners own 100% of the company - I believe you meant "founders" or perhaps "directors."
No Inflation Taxation without Representation
This is the way shared transit should be: discriminatory.
:)
Part of the reason I hate public transit is the other people on the bus/train/plane with me: there are the ones who smell, the ones who talk to themselves, the ones who start ranting, the ones who panhandle, and the ones who won't fucking shut up and let me read.
If you discriminate on the basis of employment, you are likely to eliminate most of these bad behaviors, maybe with the exception of the ones who talk to themselves. Oh, and maybe smelling, depending on how many engineers there are on the bus.
In all seriousness, though, this makes the concept of shared transit palatable. I stopped taking the commuter rail after an incident in which a strung-out druggie was "escorted" off the train at the cost of over an hour. And you know what? Because it's public transit, that same person can get back on the train and cause problems the very next time she is freed from jail/rehab again.
Forget how you've been brainwashed. Discrimination on some criteria is good.
Finally, I should throw in a point about how this transit is entirely voluntary. There is no robbery (i.e., taxation) involved in paying for it. Google does it because they have determined that it is probably making them more profitable. If the experiment succeeds, other tech companies will probably start doing the same thing, perhaps even combining efforts. And it doesn't cost me a penny that I don't choose to spend. Contrast this with public transit in Boston, for instance, where the fare pays only 1/4 of the actual cost of the system, the rest being stolen from the taxpayers of Boston, Massachusetts, and the rest of the US (in decreasing degrees) at the point of a gun.
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Amen to that. Alas, Americans think mass transit is evil.
Here's the thing with mass transit. I've lived in a variety of areas, from honestly rural (and I don't mean exurban, I mean rural), to highrise ferret cages, and most of the opposition to mass transit is in the suburbs or low-density urban areas.
The objection is pretty simple: if you bring mass transit into an area, it decreases the cost of living, because it no longer means you need to own a car. That means more people, particularly low-income people who might consume more services than they pay in (local) taxes, and thus it's a Bad Thing. There's also a lot of latent racism tied up in it, too, particularly if you have predominantly white suburbs lying outside urban areas with substantial non-white populations. But in my experience the racial influence is somewhat overstated; I'd say the single biggest factor that really scares suburbanites is that public transport will bring out young, low-income families who will overtax the public school systems (which as anyone who's lived in one of these places can attest to, are the centers of political and social power). Any proposal that might somehow negatively impact schools is a No-Go.
I've seen suburban and exurban 'bedroom communities' fight absolutely tooth and nail to keep out bus services, in particular. (Rail services seem to engender less opposition -- perhaps because you generally still need a car in order to get to the train station, so therefore it's less offensive.) Until you've seen one of these disputes in person, it's tough to appreciate the tenacity with which people will fight what seems at first glance to be a common-sense, win-win proposal. I've seen people pitch absolutely brilliant transportation schemes at local town council meetings, without realizing the minefield they were walking into, and that they were doomed from the beginning by factors essentially outside their control.
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