Steve Yegge posted some fragments from the diary of the first days of working at Google, back in 2005.
The first morning we got badged, and through a minor communications mishap, I wound up with an expression that looks exactly as if they'd said: "one... two... ack, there's a tarantula on your crotch! *click*" HR has assured me that I can go get another picture taken if I want. Unfortunately, today I am, for lack of a better word, fat. As in, obese from eating waaaaaay too much on my first day. Bloated. Stuffed. I almost yakked yesterday, actually. They didn't prepare me adequately for the experience of being surrounded by yummy free food. I had approximately the same reaction as the kids when they first got to Willy Wonka's. "Everything's edible, even the staircase!" is I think what Willy said. Roughly. And that's how it feels here at Google HQ.
I'm sitting in a temp office with a temp office mate. Both of us are heading up to Kirkland next week, aka the Land Where Everyone Appears to be from Microsoft. My office has a big window, and outside the window there's a printer with a red bull on it that says "Bull". It's a popular printer, and people come by all the time and peer at us while they rifle through their print jobs. We're a regular Noogler Zoo, me and my officemate. We have another officemate, a ghost, who evidently never arrived. His big yellow welcome balloons are mostly deflated, their smiles wrinkled into expressions of concern or balloony dismay. We hope he's OK, wherever he is.
