After a seemingly unending sabbatical, Google have finally called in my number. Some time in early June, I ceased to be an employee.
My manager-to-be (if I were to return to work) had recently written and told me that it was make-your-mind-up time. I had been having a terrible time of it, mustering the strength of character to close the book on the last five years and say goodbye to this amazing company. There were so many other things I wanted to do with my life, but there’s only one Google and it’s doing incredible things, too. What we’ve seen so far is only the tip of the iceberg of what’s to come in the years ahead. Who wouldn’t want to be a part of that?
And so I vacillated endlessly, not wanting to return to the rigours of the working week, but also not wanting to sever my ties with Google. When I was forced into a corner, however, what I had actually known for quite a while became very plain, indeed; namely that it would be very hard to resume a position I had once held at the Googleplex in Mountain View, many thousands of kilometres away in Amsterdam.
My manager would be a long way away, my colleagues would be a long way away, and the focus of my projects would also be a long way away. To top it all, the atmosphere and ethos of all that I regard to be what Google actually is would also be far removed. No more Google cafés, massages, guest speakers, etc. In many ways, the Mountain View campus, the company’s headquarters, is Google, as far as I’m concerned. That’s where it all happens; that’s where the projects are (for the most part) conceived and developed; that’s where the top hackers beaver away into the small hours.
Yes, working from home in Amsterdam, I doubt that the Google experience would have felt very much like Google at all. I would have been marginalised, trying to accomplish by e-mail and telephone calls what a walk down the corridor and a few words in someone’s ear used to achieve. That’s what I tell myself, anyway.
It feels a bit like leaving school, in that end-of-an-era sense. Jobs come and go, but there’s only one Google. Not only was it a unique place to work, but it has changed the future course of my life, rendering me (and my family) independent of and free from the shackles of wage slavery. As such, it wasn’t just a job and I have come to feel very sentimental about it.
But now it’s over and the time has come to make my peace with that fact, however much I wistfully and privately reminisce about my days in Mountain View. It’s time to look to the future, not yearn for the past. Ha! Easier said than done.
By the way, Google Earth is now available for Linux.