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Google Perks Are Great, But They All Mean Business
megazoid81 writes "While there have been complaints of late, Google was recently named the best place to work according to the widely read annual Forbes survey, in its first appearance on the list. The plethora of perks at Google does make you wonder though what kind of hours the company expects its employees to keep. In the context of Google's perks, a Knowledge@Wharton article explains that there are two kinds of workers: segmentors and integrators. Segmentors want to maintain a strict separation between work and home while integrators don't mind mixing the two. The piece posits that segmentors might actually mind too many perks at their workplace and find their commitment eroding. Does Google have a disproportionate number of integrators in its workforce? What kind of worker are you — segmentor or integrator?"
If I am doing the same work at the office that I could at home, I would like to do it at home. If the environment is nicer at my office with a more social atmosphere, then I would go to the office.
I don't see why us peons would care at any rate. Managers have already made up their minds on this issue beforehand.
This is the thing about programming in particular or creative engineering design in general. If you enjoy, or are into the work, it is very difficult to become a segmentor. Design and coding are very cerebral processes, and as it happens to me that I design and improve in my head whenever my brain finds a few free cycles. If I hit upon a good idea, I like to implement/try it immediately. Most of the better programmers/designers that I have seen do work in this mode. Hence having perks of this kind does help.
Most of the segmentors that I have seen end up in marketing or man-management at the end, even if they might have started in core engineering because of a simple reason they do not enjoy the process.
This of course is my opinion and there are exceptions, but exceptions are rare.
I agree - I hate the fact that my on-call work interferes with my weekends/nights/holidays. On the other hand, the relaxed and mellow atmosphere at my work is a nice trade-off for the on-call. So while I mind the intrusion of work into home, I appreciate that the inverse is also allowed. Balance is best.
:D
So I'd be a Seg/Int 60/40 split or some such
I specifically chose a house with a 30 minute commute to help with that split.
An operating system should be like a light switch... simple, effective, easy to use, and designed for everyone.
At my last job I was the textbook integrator. I kept on top of email from home, preformed server admin stuff at all hours via VPN, and would even come in after hours when a got a server alert that needed attention. One day, I decided to add up all these extra hours. I was a salary employee, so it's not like I was getting paid extra to work overtime. I was shocked with the totals.
During one calender year, I had worked over 200 unpaid hours. And, since they would have all been considered overtime hours and worth 1.5 regular hours, it totaled 300 hours' worth of lost wages. That's nearly two months worth of time!
So I quit that job after 10 years (I'm kinda a slow learner), and found a company that insists I work no more than 40 hours a week. If I am called on work more, I get to make it up later. So now I am a segmentor. Work is work, home is home, and never the twain shall meet.
I judt got a nre Kinesis keybiartf so please excusr ant egregiou typos.
Stupid Americans with your self-inflicted workaholicism. Don't blame google when its all in your own mind.
People should feel they can legitimately enjoy the perks then go home after doing an 8 hour day.
Whatever Google's real motivation is for offering free meals and transport, its pretty stupid to feel obliged to put in more hours because of them, especially if no-one has explicitly stated that they are provided in order to commit you to work more hours.
And if they ever do say that, then drive yourself and take sandwiches in.
Apart from anything else, the transport has wi-fi and if you're not driving yourself you can work on the bus. this is all extra time for Google worth more than the cost of the transport anyway. The value of the free food only amounts to maybe 15 minutes of pay at most, but you save more than that time by not going out to get food. So why should people still feel obliged to work extra time measured in hours?
My guess is Google's real motivation for offering those things is becase it differentiates the comapny and attracts hard-to-find developers to apply to work there in the first place. It has nothing to do with hours/week.
As a manager, if members of my team work continually work more than 40 hours/week when its not necessary for their workload, it gives me an indication that they're either not able to keep up or they're brown-nosers, either of which gives me reason and inclination to fire them.
I work from home as a developer/dba for a foreign based company, on a triplehead workstation in my living room.
That workstation also holds all my music, my games, my movies, plays my DVDs, displays my photos, records my jam sessions, records my home videos, and handles all my communications with my friends and family.
My girlfriend works from home as a self-employed graphic designer/webmaster on a dualhead workstation in our living room, 5 feet away from me as I type this.
We work when we want, we rest when we want, we play when we want.
Separation is for wage slaves. If I was a slave, I'd want to forget it whenever I could too. But if you're running your own life, it's not going to happen.
Now the Googleplex... this reminds me of a cross between living on a military base and living in your parents basement.
-1 Uncomfortable Truth
When you go from university to an IT career, the integrator role is not much of a shift. You are already used to the crazy hours, and crunch time to get a project done at the last moment. Your friends in school are your classmates in CS and you expect co-workers as friends. You are young, and a perk filled job even with being on job even when you are off seems like fun, after all you are doing what you dreamed of.
I wanted to be a programmer since I was 9 years old, and after I was done school and working full time, work was my life. I'd often work from 7 am until 11 pm, and I would hang out with co-workers off hours too. Although my co-workers and I had diverse conversations, the subject easily slid into work related matters, so it seemed I never really escaped the topic of tech very often. We didn't have Google level perks, but I was having a great time, making pre-dot-com-crash cash and had almost no time to spend it.
The crash happened. I was now 30, work was my life, and "real life" was slipping by me. I had grown apart from "non-work friends", relationship with my family, and my love life suffered too. I felt like I was one dimensional, because work had taken up almost every moment of my waking life, the other interests I once had, were sitting on the shelf. I hadn't seen a live band, gone to the theatre, spent the afternoon in an art gallery, instead I was working or talking about work. Being out of work for a year gave me time to think. I remembered how much I enjoyed so many things other than IT - and took up hobbies, contacted old friends, and found a new boyfriend and by the time I found a full time job again I knew I did not want to work for any company who was offering too many perks because I knew from experience that if they give you too many perks they expect too many hours back from you.
I now separate. I show up for work at 9am and leave at 5pm. My current job does not expect constant overtime (maybe once or twice a year) and in an emergency I will check my email or VPN in - but that too is rare. My co-workers are in their 30's and 40's so they have lives too. I see them during work hours only and although I like them and enjoy working with them, they are co-workers, not friends.
I see my real friends after work and on weekends, and instead of talking about technology, we talk about independent film, politics, art, music, theatre and just about everything but computers. I don't talk about work to my friends except when I have had a busy day, I let them know it was hectic and I'd love to go out for a beer to forget it.
Despite less money and no perks, I enjoy my job just as much as my pre-dot-com-crash job, and I have a very interesting life outside of work. Both sides are fulfilling, and I now prefer both sides separate.
Jerk, God doesn't send people cancer. People get cancer because cell replication is an imperfect process. It's not a higher message, it's just a disease.
It's disgusting when people pretend a disease is a good thing just so that they can believe that everything in life has a purpose.