Silicon Valley way of working

Time flies when we are doing what you like. I arrived here four weeks ago and now I´m about to return to Madrid in a few days. My idea was to dive as deep as I was able in the Silicon Valley waters and I believe I´ve done it. It´s been a pretty intense experience. I worked hard but had time to travel around San Francisco and the Bay area as well.

I did also have the opportunity to attend some meetings and events and hence visit the HQ of Google, Facebook, Linkedin, Pinterest, Hewlett Packard, Mozilla and Twitter. Not bad for a month stay!.

Leaving HP aside, as it may be considered a different animal, the offices of the rest companies mentioned have a similar look&feel and share many features. All employers try to keep workers as happy as they can and make their lifes easier. Having fun in the office is a must. I guess a picture is worth a thousand words.

Snapshot was taken at Linkedin premises (many more pics. and comments on my Twitter account). Actually employees have to walk across the machines to get to their desks. Goes without saying that all these amenities are free of charge.

Facebook and Google serve three meals a day. At a different level, many companies have a kitchen where you can grab a soft drinks, coffee, snacks, etc. at any time. Gym, laundry and maid services are common benefits. Googleplex has even an outdoor swimming pool. It is easier to figure out after watching this video. Flexibility plays a key role. They believe innovation arises in relaxed atmospheres, with makes total sense in my opinion. Everybody dress casual and many use bikes (combined with Caltrain) to commute.

Leading companies dedicate huge amount of money to develop appealing environments in order to attract and hold talented people as employee turnover is very high here -18 months in average. By the way, this years it´s Facebook and not Google who was ranked #1 best place to work according to Glassdoor report.

What surprised me is the external look of these offices. I was expecting astonishing design building like Oracle HQ everywhere but they are quite ordinary. Actually Pinterest, Mozilla or Zynga offices in SF look like factories from outside. The magic is inside!

I said before HP is different. They were on top years ago but now Silicon Valley is driven by challenging companies. One photo is enough to illustrate how different is the workspace there.