Thirteen Months of Working, Eating, and Sleeping at the Googleplex

[uuilly]

I 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...

[kragen]

Wait, what's strange about him?

[ogreveins]

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.

[zzalpha]

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...

[devindotcom]

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.

[bbcbasic]

> 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 :-)

[jlarocco]

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.

[infinotize]

Only on HN!

Doesn't this beg the question: Why would you suffer such an unreasonably irrational wife?

[nosuchthing]

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/

[seansmccullough]

I agree, especially if you're not home a lot, it's not worth it.

[rayiner]

Where would you host dinner parties?

[samstave]

Have kids?

[s73v3r]

" 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.

[jarcane]

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.

[tedks]

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.

[4096]

https://www.quora.com/Which-Googler-holds-the-record-for-liv...

Interview with guy because of above answer.

[asteli]

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).

[Turing_Machine]

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".

[comrh]

That article was overwhelmingly depressing. Living in a van is a better life then remote work?

[jmspring]

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.

[cpncrunch]

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.

[quadrature]

Sounds like a certain CEO

http://www.businessinsider.com/tony-hsiehs-home-in-a-trailer...

[supercanuck]

How are these fringe benefits not taxable as pay? Should they be?

http://www.irs.gov/publications/p15b/ar02.html#en_US_2014_pu...

[ghaff]

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.

[simonk]

Read further down, exclusions to fringe benefits include Meals, Lodging on your business premises, Athletic facilities, and other things.

[mark_l_watson]

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.

[srj]

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.

[mathgladiator]

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. ;)

[timothybone]

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.

[animefan]

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.

[Reedx]

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.

[ljk]

> 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?

[culled]

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.

[Dorian-Marie]

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?

[ggambetta]

Internet access?

At Google HQ?

Being an employee?

...no clue :(

[astrange]

Regular California apartments don't have air conditioning anyway.

[oaktowner]

Cellular for internet, if the wireless doesn't reach (and Google has pretty good wireless outside on much of the campus).

[ljk]

> What about Internet access?

Probably wi-fi

[Steko]

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.

[slapshot]

RMS, is that you?

[akshat_h]

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?

[shanemhansen]

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.

[ocdtrekkie]

This is known as an "unhealthy work/life balance".

[cpncrunch]

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.

[rburhum]

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!