Thirteen Months of Working, Eating, and Sleeping at the Googleplex
bloomberg.comI worked w/ Ben through our google acquisition. This is all accurate. He's a fun, talented guy. Funnily enough he was only the 4th or 5th strangest bird of the 50 or so employees at 510 systems. Good times...
Wait, what's strange about him?
Ben and I started at Google on the same day. I was pretty psyched to meet him because I'd followed his website (http://vterrain.org/) for years. He's a fairly loud, outgoing guy. Among a bunch of quirky nerds he sticks out with his 10" ponytail. When he first told me he was living out of the parking lot, I thought he was joking.
How quirky are these nerds if someone sticks out by having long hair? Did I fall asleep in 2015 and wake up in 1962?
Thanks for the link to his website! It looks awesome!
Yeah, in retrospect that reads way more derpy than I expected. Ben's a great guy. :)
The rationale behind it makes perfect sense. Do you really want to give someone $2-3000 per month or $24-36k a year just to have a box around you? Especially if you don't own much stuff? How much do you actually need besides your computer, phone, clothes and toiletries? Gym for bathroom and free public wifi for internet aside from your phone and you're set.
The rental and housing market is disgusting. I wouldn't consider it except for my wife.
The rationale behind it makes perfect sense. Do you really want to give someone $2-3000 per month or $24-36k a year just to have a box around you?
Really? You honestly can't fathom why some people might desire their own, private space, away from their work environment, where they might, I dunno, live their life outside of their day-to-day drudgery?
I'm not even sure how to react to that. It's such an alien way of thinking, I simply can't relate to it... it's baffling.
I mean, the minute humans formed fixed communities instead of hunting and gathering, we've been driven by the need to build public and private spaces in which to live. Questioning that need is questioning one of the founding tenants of modern human society...
Yeah, I'm with you. I have a guitar! I have books! I have a large bed and a variety of clothes. I need some place to store my skis and my running shoes. I enjoy cooking. I don't see myself as materialistic, just as a passionate hobbyist/human.
Tools, man. Where do you keep your table saw when you're living in a van?
You joke a bit but this is one of the biggest things I miss now (in a small apartment in the middle of a city). Growing up in suburbia with a well-stocked garage for tinkering was a wonderful experience. Yeah, hackerspaces; not quite the same though...
I won't pay 300 more a month for modern fixtures, plumbing, or millwork, but I'd pay it for a two-car heated garage with a 220v outlet and good lighting.
Haha, I told the real estate agent I wanted a 2 bedroom house with a 5 car garage :-)
220? I want 480v three phase. :-)
I'm sure it wont be long until hackerspaces become competitive enough to introduce 'hobby' workshop rooms etc for people to spend more time there...
Hell maybe apartment buildings should accommodate things like this instead of just having a gym/pool included
Hackerspaces have had various conflicts related to people living in them for decades now. You’re probably aware that Stallman was sleeping in his office at the AI Lab in the 80s.
Google has some pretty insane machine shops and labs (electrical, bio, & chemistry)... They blow my home lab out of the water -- and I've probably spent upwards of $30k on my home EE lab.
Can you walk into one and use it to make yourself a new set of silverware, or do you have to be, like, working on a Google project?
Our maker space at Google Seattle (which is not a full on machine shop, although we should have the mill online soon) is explicitly for personal projects only (for liability reasons, I believe, although IANALcat).
This. The fear of never being able to again live in an apartment is most of what keeps me from buying any tools bigger than the MakerBot.
When every one thinks alike, no one is thinking. I welcome frugalists who do not want to own home or pay rent, even though that is not my lifestyle. I see their point. Different strokes for different folks.
I can't see that as "frugalism", more just freeloading. They want the benefits of having a place to live, but with none of the responsibility or bills.
I desire private space, but I'm willing to sacrifice just about anything to avoid the Midwest and suburbia. If no private space is the cost of living in real city, then so it goes.
>Really? You honestly can't fathom why some people might desire their own, private space, away from their work environment, where they might, I dunno, live their life outside of their day-to-day drudgery?
I agree, but you do have to admit that $2k-$3k per month is a huge trade-off, especially considering how little you're actually going to get for that money.
Would you prefer to spend the same money on a shitty, expensive apartment now, or a nicer, cheaper house later?
Or, hell, simple carnal pleasures. I'm pretty thrifty, but I think it's reasonable to expect most people could come up with some pretty solid ideas to increase their happiness with an extra $1k (after tax)/month. Then save the rest.
>>Questioning that need is questioning one of the founding tenants of modern human society...
There's private space to live in his van, there's no problem there, yes he too wants a private space to live in like the rest of us. The difference is the van does not provide a box around him unlike the 2-3k box.
I completely disagree. Sure there a few things I'd want to keep with me, a couple of books, a surfboard, a suitcase with clothes and shoes, my laptop, etc.
I could leave my business clothes at work, 3 pairs of pants and 5/6 business shirts. At the end of the week I dry clean it as needed. I can shower at work and I have all the entertainment I could possibly need on my laptop.
If I had a convenient and dependable car and safe overnight parking I would DEFINITELY not pay rent. Oh yeah I'd have to lose the girlfriend too of course...
Not to judge it, but clearly your lifestyle differs greatly from mine. I value a separate space, privacy, my own books and plants and furniture, a neighborhood that isn't a business district or food court.... and a hundred other things that living full-time at a workplace make impossible.
These two lifestyles are not merely incompatible but imcompossible. What you describe sounds to me like living like a drone - as in, an actual bee.
> The rental and housing market is disgusting. I wouldn't consider it except for my wife.
There you go. It is not in our nature to optimize for efficient use of money. There are other desires that will outwit this including the desire to reproduce, the desire to fit in socially, the desire for space and boundaries, the desire for inertia.
I used to think about living in a camper van to 'protest' against ridiculous house prices and paying rent. I never quite wanted to do it, and mainly because of what other people would say. Of course some people have the guts to be daring and different :-)
What doesn't make sense to me about that line of thinking is why even keep working? Why not work for a year, save money, and then live in your van wherever just doing whatever?
If you could save $75k of the $135k salary, you could go a very long time living in a van in somewhere like South Dakota.
Alimony, or the quick modern way for man to achieve indentured servitude.
I would hazard that someone who is happy enough in their job to live at work (let's face it, no one who is proposing this is working at Taco Bell) doesn't have being able to leave their job as their #1 priority.
I'm sure it's somewhere up there, but I see this as more of a compatible lifestyle choice than a suffer-in-the-short-term-then-cash-out scheme.
I hadn't thought of that, and it makes sense, thought I don't quite understand it.
Only on HN!
Doesn't this beg the question: Why would you suffer such an unreasonably irrational wife?
Not sure that this deserves to be down voted. If the only reason for not continuing this lifestyle is his wife, doesn't that imply that his wife is being irrational?
It means his partner has different values and needs and they are compromising as part of the relationship. That is highly rational.
No, it doesn't. It's just as plausible that he's the one being irrational.
Imagine an affordable mobile home for college students, or developing nations, or even just Americans who are priced out of the area where they work..
http://www.designboom.com/design/cornelius-comanns-bufalino/
That's so strange. If you're going to park your tiny home somewhere, why not make it the size of a regular car, like the VW Westfalia camper van?
Westfalias retail for upwards of ~$50,000, with 1980's models still fetching upwards of $15,000...
If the Elio [1] can retail for $6,800 new, it's not a stretch to imagine a modern minimal camper-motorcycle/tuktuk/scooter for under ~$20,000... models for countries with less regulatory requirements like India or Asia regions might have much less expensive versions.
Westfalias are expensive because they are a bit of a fetish item. I have a 2000 converted camper van (pop top, fridge, solar panels, stove, running water) that I bought for 13k. It's still expensive, but not compared to a tempermental westfalia that's 20 years older.
I assume it's somewhat due to the slim form factor?
There are ford/dodge van campers but they're cumbersome compared to the slimmer Volkswagen Westfalias and similar early Toyota TownAce models. Westfalias have a much larger userbase and parts aftermarket though.
Ah, I had no idea that they cost so much. Thanks
Looks cool but maybe overengineered?
I don't know about college students in the US, but German students live pretty cheap in shared flats. I pay 350 Euro for my share of an inner city Wilhelminian apartment house. It goes down to maybe 200 Euro. I can't see this to be a bigger problem in developing nations.
I'd consider those mobile homes for the mobility though..
I agree, especially if you're not home a lot, it's not worth it.
Also not worth it: spending so much time at work that you're not home a lot.
Where would you host dinner parties?
There are rental spaces for that sort of thing -- people rent them for weddings and such all the time, some privately owned, some public (the parks department here has some buildings that can be reserved for functions).
One that I'm thinking of even has a full commercial kitchen that you can use (for extra money).
Have kids?
" Do you really want to give someone $2-3000 per month or $24-36k a year just to have a box around you? "
Yes. I want to leave the office. I want to have my own space, where I can do my own thing. I want to have a place where I can cook my own meals, and raise my plants. Possibly a pet.
I want the box part, but the $24-36k per year bit I don't.
Part of my ‘problem’ with some elements of programming culture, is I fundamentally I don’t think I have that part of my brain where code is my hammer and every problem looks like a nail, so I struggle to even imagine a self-made project I’d have that kind of dedication to, let alone some random corporate or startup app thing.
Like what does Google even do that’s really deserving of that kind of dedication? There are religious orders that are less demanding than many of these stories. I kinda get the practical argument about SV housing costs until I think about it for two seconds and go "What? Fuck, no!"
It's a job. Might even be a good job. But if your work-life balance ceases to be so much a balance as 'just work all the time until you're rich' I can't see that as healthy. It's like some people are entirely voluntarily recreating the company town, and employees are lapping it right up.
Did you read the article? I would agree with you in general, but this seems like an off-base comment about someone whose express objective is moving back to the farm to await the collapse of civilization.
The impression is, in fairness, less about the main subject, than some of the other stories told in the article.
Our future farmer may've been more 'practical suffering' than 'true believer' but some of the other tales, and the more beyond I've heard over the years, very much seem to come from the latter.
https://www.quora.com/Which-Googler-holds-the-record-for-liv...
Interview with guy because of above answer.
My guess is that this happens more often than one would think. Discoe wasn't even the only campus resident within the Self-Driving Car team, let alone all of Google (there was a safety driver who lived in a van by the self-driving car garage).
Some of the old school Stanford AI lab hackers were famous for sleeping in the suspended ceiling. The way I heard the story, they even cut into a ventilation duct to get cool air for their "nest".
That article was overwhelmingly depressing. Living in a van is a better life then remote work?
No, but one can't always get the remote work.
I've been approached to help with some bay area startups, but the mere thought of having to sit in a car and spend a bunch of hours in the Valley? So not appealing right now. I've done the sleep at work thing randomly over the years, never again.
Presumably if you got a nice big RV with double-glazed windows, aircon, heating, TV, and there were electricity/water/sewage hookups, it could be quite comfortable. It might be worth google making hookups available for employees who want to live in their RVs on-site.
Sounds like a certain CEO
http://www.businessinsider.com/tony-hsiehs-home-in-a-trailer...
It would be nice if someone set up something like that in SV, although I suspect the land would be too expensive.
There's 3 or 4 trailer parks in Mountain View, one of which is basically next door to Google.
Do many/any google employees live in them? It would seem to be a cost-effective solution to living in SV, and removes (or at least significantly reduces) the commute at the same time.
How are these fringe benefits not taxable as pay? Should they be?
http://www.irs.gov/publications/p15b/ar02.html#en_US_2014_pu...
By way of context, understand that cases like these are outliers from the perspective of the existing tax laws.
Athletic facilities: Many companies have a locker room, maybe a shower, maybe a treadmill or two. Is the IRS going to force employees to buy a gym membership so they can take a post lunchtime shower prior to a customer meeting?
As for meals/on-premise lodging/etc. Historically (and currently still, modulo Google-type outliers) this sort of thing typically applies to people living on a job site as I did when I was running projects on oil rigs and in shipyards. Plenty of other examples as well. Especially in a remote location, these services can be quite expensive to deliver. It would be pretty unreasonable to make employees declare them as taxable benefits.
Read further down, exclusions to fringe benefits include Meals, Lodging on your business premises, Athletic facilities, and other things.
Read even further down: Exempt if furnished for your convenience as a condition of employment.
i.e. this seems to imply that optional lodging is taxable.
True (and makes sense) although I doubt a parking space qualifies as a housing benefit.
I thought that the article would be about people who camped out inside the buildings. When I worked at Google I got to work around 6am each day and by after lunch I might get tired so I would at least once a week find somewhere quiet for a nap. Easy to do.
I could imagine someone single simply living inside for short periods of time, if necessary.
I wanted my wife to be comfortable so I spent a fortune out of pocket on a four room Marriot appartment/suite place. But, it was fairly close to work and my wife loved it.
Right out of undergrad school I worked for a large software company (not Google) and I could have pictured myself doing this. Usually around 7-8pm I'd start exploring options for what to do that night and if nobody wanted to go out anywhere I knew I'd only be going home to use the computer. It made more sense to just stay at work. I'd be more likely to work on something I thought was fun though at least.
When I was in my mid twenties, I lived on my college campus for a year (not approved, slept in the computer science building). It was awesome. ;)
I think things like this are great, as social experiments these are important, esp. b/c we are exploring how to reclaim spaces, making it less of a crime to inhabit spaces.
While these people sound cool, I notice that hn treats then like heroes while it treats people who violate zoning laws at scale as villains.
To assuming considering doing this I would say please please don't. If a dozen people did it the company would crack down and amend it's policies.
Interesting. This is something I've been wondering about.
Because I've been noticing a lot of RVs and vans (with windows blacked out) that seem to be permanently parked in areas of Palo Alto. Sometimes on fairly busy roads. So have been curious as to whether any were actually being used that way.
> Discoe points at the screen. “When I read this, I was like, ‘Does he know me?’ There’s only really me who fits this description.
I thought someone who works at google should be smart enough to know that these type of personality tests are pretty vague and can be applied to many people?
He was referring to this xkcd - http://m.xkcd.com/977/. The description, as stated in the article, was “You like Isaac Asimov, XML, and shoes with toes. You think the Segway got a bad rap. You own 3D goggles, which you use to view rotating models of better 3D goggles. You type in Dvorak.” I don't think that could be considered a vague personality test that can be applied to many people.
Ah, didn't know it was xkcd comic he was referring to
They all are. That's the whole point of the comic.
Yes, and it seems he is smart enough to understand sarcasm...
So he got food, water, shower and toilets from Google's office.
He only used his van as a sleeping place.
He should definitely do an AMA:
What about Internet access?
What about the cold? Sleeping bags? Isolation inside the van?
What about the hot? Air conditioning?Internet access?
At Google HQ?
Being an employee?
...no clue :(
What about the NSFW stuff? I guess you could hook up a wifi access point and tunnel your connection through to a VPN.
In fact, there's so much NSFW stuff floating around the web that I had to sign a form when I joined Google that said I won't sue Google for being exposed to porn during work.
Nobody cares if you click a link to porn site. In many cases, it might even be a part of your work. ("Dang, porn again, this query shouldn't show porn!")
if you can find it with google, its prob okay..
Regular California apartments don't have air conditioning anyway.
AFAIK it's only in SF they don't. Everywhere else in California is properly hot.
Living in Los Angeles as a college student for five years, none of my apartments had air conditioning. Sure, some houses had it... but even in LA it's a bit of a luxury.
Same goes for the homes of everyone I knew in Lake Tahoe, where I grew up. The climate's similar to the bay during the summer, but it's still (partially) in California. ;)
Born and grown up in Oklahoma, and living in Texas (Austin from '96-04, Houston for the past ten years) living somewhere without AC seems so bizarre. What if you like it cooler than the weather permits?
Heck, I have central AC in my house here, and I keep the house generally at 75, but have a window AC in my bedroom that lets me crank it down to 66-68 in there.
yes, it sucks without ac.
in california, it's the older buildings that aren't fitted for it. most new buildings have it.
i live in an old building (built in 50s) and a year ago i finally couldn't stand it any longer and bought a floor standing unit that i vent out the window. it's nice.
Heh, heh. San Diego is pretty temperate and many of the houses were properly constructed--they don't rely on air conditioning, so you can shrug off the 88* summer days. High ceilings, copious windows and balconies... Slide those doors and windows open, revel in the near-constant ocean breeze, never sweat. Until persistent heat and high humidity (relatively high, still laughable compared to the southern states I hail from) struck southern California year 'round the past few years. Many of my neighbors are installing air conditioning after living without it for 28+ years.
We'll see how El Nino ruins things for us holdouts.
Nope; plenty of apartments in Menlo Park, Palo Alto, and Mountain View don't have air conditioning.
I lived in one in Menlo Park that I wished had air conditioning...
Every apartment I've had in Southern California has had air conditioning.
Cellular for internet, if the wireless doesn't reach (and Google has pretty good wireless outside on much of the campus).
> What about Internet access?
Probably wi-fi
This article pairs nicely with How I Gave Up Alternating Current from a few days ago. The only place left to go in the bachelor lifehacking one upsmanship game is to stop changing clothes and showering altogether, live under a bridge, telecommuting and doing all your work with a prepaid Andro-- err Firefox OS phone that you charge with a hand crank. No parrots.
RMS, is that you?
Can't be, RMS likes parrots.
But would not like one as a gift.
So, commenting late so may not get a response. But I am curious about handling stuff like bank accounts, health insurance etc. like that require you to specify an address. How does that work out?
I'd be willing to bet most people use their parents address, or a friend, or a girlfriend/boyfriend. They can probably also use their actual work address for some things or a po box.
This is known as an "unhealthy work/life balance".
I guess it depends on your perspective. Zero commute, low living expenses, zero? crime. You can probably go to your RV to take an afternoon nap.
Across former Soviet states there are now-crumbling collective farms with purpose-built apartment buildings nearby, the apartments having been constructed for the farm workers. Every time I hear about one of these 'living at work' stories I can't help but draw the comparison, unfairly or not, to Soviet-era apartments near these farms. Zero commute, low living expenses ... but to me it's not any way I'd want to 'live'.
> You can probably go to your RV to take an afternoon nap.
You don't need to go that far… Google has nap pods[1].
(Note: He mentions them in the article, "Those Google nap pods are a joke. It’s an awkward bench with a cone over your head."; but this is as a reference to nighttime sleeping, not afternoon napping.)
Ben is one of those guys that looks at the world differently. Smart as hell, humble and fun to hang out with. Hardcore OSM user!
Does anyone have a link so I can read the article in China? Or post a pastebin with the text? It would be greatly appreciated.
In Silicon Valley mythology, sleeping at the
office is second only to working out of a garage
Yeah, but not true at all. Sure, there's plenty of garage mythos (though that's decidedly old-school now). But living at your office...? It happens occasionally and it's nuts, but it's not at all part of SV culture. This is first I've heard of Elon/et al doing it.
I dunno, I slept in my office in grad school. It wasn't out of needing to feel like a hard worker or showing off or whatever, it was more that sometimes I just felt like working until I was about to fall asleep, and then I was too tired to head home.
Yeah, I agree maybe for one night, but repeatedly?
Some people are interested in their work, especially at Google. I do things every night until I fall asleep, though not usually work.
I would love to sleep at work but I am not allowed to (I work at a courthouse). Monday through Friday I work downtown, my gym is downtown, all my going out is downtown, I am and plan to be kid-free forever... if I could save the commuting time, which is minimal, and get an extra hour of sleep or stay out a little longer and socialize, I would be delighted. Heck, I would even do a little extra work if I could just recline on the couch and fall asleep.
Agreed, I do as well. After a point though, it becomes inefficient to bang at a problem repeatedly.
Much of my work in grad school was episodic, so I often slept on my lab's couch. I'd work for an hour or two, nap for a while until it was time for the next step, and so on.
But I'd rather work at home.
I'd also venture to guess that it isn't true.