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{ Tag Archives } Sydney

I will survive…

It’s been a hectic week, but I have managed to survive my first week as a Noogler. As everyone knows, I started at Google last week. The first week has been quite hectic as I started at the Sydney office and then in the middle of week flew to the Googleplex in Mountain View, California (if anyone is located in this area and wants to have lunch, feel free to look me up!).

The week has been a little bit of a mess for a number of reasons. I’m joining the PSO group at Google which is only just started to establish a presence at the Sydney office, this has meant not a lot of people know what I should be doing. To make matters worse, I managed to arrive for the Memorial Day weekend (public holiday on Monday) which means the normal schedule for training (which starts on a Monday) is all changed. It’s still be very demanding and interesting anyway.

I arrived here in San Francisco on a Thursday (before I actually left according to wall time, Yay timezones!)  and after sleeping for about 18 hours straight managed to make it into the office on the Friday. The jet lag didn’t really end up hitting me until the weekend, so I’ve spent the last three days trying to reset my body clock instead of doing anything interesting.

I’m very pleased with the transparency inside of Google. I have yet to find a door which my keycard won’t open or a website which I can not access with my login. Of course I can’t tell anyone outside of Google what I have found out which is annoying, there is a lot of cool stuff going on.

Having worked mainly for small companies in the past, it’s nice to be able to walk into TechStop (Google’s tech support department) and get both hardware and support. It’s nice having small things like beverages (such as that all important coffee) and food provided. The food in the Sydney office is not bad, but it pales in comparison to the variety and quality that you get here at the Googleplex.

I have heard that people worry that with all the food at Google you just end up going to lunch with your work mates, I don’t think that is something having food provided creates. At the my previous work I ended up in that situation, always having lunch with the same people at the same locations, the only difference is that I was paying for it! Google is liberal about letting you invite friends to have lunch at their free cafeteria’s too.

Over all, it has been a very busy and interesting week. I’m looking forward to what tomorrow (and the rest of this week) holds.

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2008 05 27 mithro Google Comments (1)

Packing your bags…

About 6 months ago I started interviewing with Google Australia and about a month ago they made me a job offer that I could not refuse. So now I’m packing my bags and heading to Sydney, I start work in about three weeks but I am being sent to the States for some training first. Unlike most of the Googlers in Sydney, I’m not going to be working on Google Maps.

I’m very excited too start working with Google but it has been pretty big decision to make. I have never moved anywhere permanently before and I’m currently still living at home with my parents. I did live in Sweden for 6 months, but that was always with the intention of coming back home. On the other hand, it is not like I am moving to totally a different country and I already have loads of friends and family living in Sydney.

I have been thinking that I want to move to a big city for a number of reasons. An example of this that I often use, is that “I want to be able to order pizza after midnight”. It is annoying that just when I’ve started getting more involved in the local FOSS groups I’m leaving for another state. I do hope to continually be involved with SLUG and other FOSS events going on in Sydney too.

I’ve spent most of this ANZAC Day long weekend trying to organize all my stuff. You never realize how much crap you have until you decide to move and I don’t even own any furniture yet! Luckily my parents have plenty of storage space. Having never done this before, I’m sure that I’m probably doing it all wrong.

I’m a little bit of a technology pack rat (like most geeks) but I have been trying to give away all the old computer bits that I had always being meaning to fix or use. There should be plenty of happy Adelaide FOSS people soon 😉

If you are in Adelaide and want to catch up before I head off (Friday the 16th), or in Sydney (or even the Mountain View, USA) and want to come and say “Hi!” please feel free to email me.

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2008 04 27 mithro Google
Sydney Comments (2)