I am Rohit Murarishetti, a senior CSD student who went to the University of Maryland, College Park, as part of the Global Exchange Program. Of the many exciting things I did while on the exchange, visiting Google’s Headquarters was something my inner technology geek and computer science enthusiast thoroughly enjoyed.
In this blog post, I will talk about my day spent at Google’s Campuses in Mountain View, Bay View, and Sunnyvale.
I began at the Google Sunnyvale campus in the morning, where I had to be checked in as a guest, after which I headed straight into the dining hall. I had heard enough about all the excellent food that googlers get to eat.
A quirk about Google is that employees can view the menu for the dining halls on any campus worldwide and plan to work from any Google campus. As such, knowing this quirk, I had planned my visit on the day when Indian food was being served, with the help of my Googler friend.
I had a dish called poha and, idly, some of the best Indian food I ever had outside India. The food just hit like home. After having a feisty breakfast, I headed straight to the gaming room, where I played some retro arcade games before we headed out to visit the global HQ, Googleplex Mountain View Campus.
The first thing that caught my eye were Google-themed bicycles, and the size of the campus felt like that of a city. The visitor center gave us a map of all the attractions and easter eggs on campus for us to go around and visit.
While there, I couldn’t help but notice the happiness and cheer in all the employees about returning to work after COVID-19. The work environment at Google was designed to make the workplace not feel like one but somewhere an employee could come to hang out, work and enjoy their time. It didn’t look like any other office space I had been to.
Google crafted their offices to be a space where any employee felt passionate about their work, making it one of the most desirable spaces to work in the tech space. After going around for a while, I had to break for lunch. The food options in the global HQ were insane.
They have every cuisine you can think of, with ala carte and buffet options, again fully free. I had a pizza along with some naan and dal makhani.
After lunch, I went around biking to visit all the androids around the campus to take some pictures. I also stopped by the Google merch store to check out all the goodies that employees can purchase.
After this, I visited the latest and greatest campus of Google in SF, the Bay View Campus, it looked more like an art museum than a workplace. I heard from Googlers on site that it was designed by art directors from Hollywood and Disney to craft an experience similar to an art installation or a museum.
I had a wonderful time experiencing how it’d be to work in a place like Google, which is extremely sought after by the industry and the employees alike.
