after_alex

I spend a good amount of time thinking how the hell I got here. “Here”…is Silicon Valley. But most of you are probably asking, or would rather ask, “HOw the hell did you get to Afghanistan?” But now that I’m back, I’m still scratching my head on how I’m working for one of the biggest software companies in the world…here in Silicon Valley. It’s definitely something I didn’t imagine myself doing about 2 yrs ago (Afghanistan seemed closer…almost). But here’s an excerpt from the Google story that sums up my sentiment and my discomfiture with a rational destiny at this point:

– ——————–
Google’s Corporate Culture
Brin and Page share an office space not much bigger than a walk-in closet. The 3,000 employees who work at company headquarters appear very happy.

About 1,000 have become millionaires, and sometimes it’s hard to tell when they are working.
“I love working at Google,” Camille Hart said. “It’s the next best thing to not working at all.”
“I feel like this is a little part of home for me,” Corin Anderson said.
The campus, as they call it, has everything workers need or could ever want — free massages, free use of a gym, free snacks, free laundry service and a barber shop.

“We try to provide a really comfortable environment here, and also we make it playful to create creativity,” said Brin. “We think we get better products out of it by letting our people be more creative.”

Doug Banks, a Google software engineer, even enjoys a game of volleyball during work.
“Get to work at 9:30, see if anyone wants to play volleyball, come out here at 10:30 — in between do some work,” he said.

Google also offers three square meals a day — for free.
“Breakfast, lunch and dinner every day,” said Google chef Robert Morgan. “It seems like the better we feed them, the more creative they are.”
———————-

-yup. I don’t work at Google, and SAP doesn’t have the lavish amenities like Google. But…the Google story just about sums it up…

Today I gave a presentation at work. I gave the presentation to 3 people in our project room at work…and 35 other SAP colleagues spread across 3 continents. That was definitely a first. I’ve never given a virtual presentation to so many people before, in so many different places and time zones. At this moment I’m just reeling back from my epiphany on just how powerful teleconferencing is.

The whole experience also makes me realize just how global SAP is as a company. I mean, I should already know how global it is…and I do (it’s represented in like 160 countries or something), but the scale of the company’s operations are just obvious in my everyday work. At all hours of the day, there’s people around me blabbering on the phone with someone in Germany, or some developer in China or a consultant in India. So weird. It’s weird that when I send an e-mail to another SAP employee I can get a response 2 minutes later…and then I realize that this person is in Montreal, Canada or Walldorf, Germany – and is awake to take my e-mails at 3:49 am or whatever.

Crazy. It’s even crazier when I submit an internal trouble ticket with the corporate IT system, and my request gets routed through 3 other people manning systems in 2 other continents…and then the local IT guy downstairs arrives at my desk to install some software, which I am now authorized to use because Joseph Schroeder in Budapest, Hungary has clicked his mouse over the “Submit User Rights” button.

So this is what life is like in the globally connected information age…not only am I now a global citizen, but I’m part of some globally living organism…that doesn’t sleep, and has its cells tucked away in corners of the earth that I never heard of before. At the same time, as a cell living and serving as part of this organism, I don’t know – or even need to know – where on earth my supervisor or my team member is when we have our weekly status meetings. (Maybe I should). What I do know is that at 8:45 am on Thursdays everyone will show up at our teleconference and it’s business as usual as soon as I hit the “Start” button icon at the corner of the screen …

Here’s an excerpt from a message to my friend Liz in New York. She’s unofficially my sister, since we both share the same last name, both grew up in OC, and both went to Berkeley at the same time. -

“ah. i’m happy for you liz. i dunno it’s weird. i get this feeling like
you’re really growing just by being in ny or something. thats really cool
about the research position too, and yes early mornings suck esp when they
start wayy before sunrise. but at this point i’m really recognizing the
value of research – related work. people say it all the time but work that
allows you to learn something new everyday (not to mention all the time) is
good work.

i’m kinda regretting not taking the think-tank/research route right now –
not that the door is closed – but it’s just a world away right now. i’m
learning things myself at work, so it’s not like i’m totally stagnant, but
it’s a very specific type of learning – you know – commercial culture and
all that. it’s still quite wholesome cuz the company is that kinda company,
but it’s only on the cutting edge in some respects. you know….

as for the brown ones – it’s always hard to bring it up. no resolution. i
think i’m just waiting right now for an alternative scenario as the answer
so I dont even have to bring up the brown ones. = )

life is getting a bit weird tho. i’m def getting older – like its way
obvious that the things making me happy now are just the little things –
like coffee this morning. like, wtf? it just feels good. but whats happening
to me? what’s next? golf on sundays? HELP

haha. do you ever feel that way ?”

That’s a quote from 40 Year Old Virgin. What a great movie.

Anyway, these past few days I got a couple of compliments at work. They were just comments about how I’m doing pretty well at work and this and that, and the suprising thing is that it actually helped ease my spirit a bit. I’m usually not the kind of person who really cares for compliments and such, but this time has taught me that almost everyone could use some good spirit and affirmations every once in a while. It seems that at work this would be important b/c it helps me figure out what I’m doing right and what I’m doing wrong, so I can just deliver the right results. But it’s also the fact that I’m in a new environment and it seems that people are finally relaxing a bit, and I don’t get the feeling anymore that everyone’s trying to test me out. That’s good.

There’s plenty of other aspects of life that could use some affirmation though, so today I’ll start recognizing that and congratulate people who deserve some praise and recognize the positives in life that are overdue for some “affirmation.”

I don’t know what it was. But I’ve had Taco Bell cravings for the past three or four days. I finally gave in today. Had one hard and one soft taco.

I have no idea how my blog has descended into the ramblings of my dietary cravings, but maybe it has something to do with the fact that there is just so much accessible food around here. Fast food, Japanese food, grocery food, Chinese food. It’s all here. There’s so much other stuff around here in Cupertino, CA as well. Man, only if they had a Taco Bell in Afghanistan.