So WE went to Google today! We woke up to the pouring rain this morning, but we wouldn't let the weather get us down today! We headed out for Google around 8:15am from the Menlo Park Inn.
Google headquarters was fascinating!! The architecture and interior design of the buildings was purely representative of the type of imagination and innovation that is cultivated within the company. We saw tons of micro cafes around the office, along with many playful decorations from dry erase drawings to full wooden doors attached to second story window frames. We met with 4 different people from Google other than Craig. We met with Davidson Young from university relations, Michael Braderman from Google Enterprise, Euefu Wang from Google Books, Jessica Pfund from Google Maps and Rick Klau from Blogger. All of the presentations were very informative and interesting. It was super cool to see the background of Google Maps and the direction that it was going. Since everyone in the class is on blogger, it was great to connect a face to the software product that we are all relying on.
After all of our morning meetings, we got a chance to eat in one of Google’s cafeterias called "Charlie's Cafe." The food was absolutely wonderful. There was a mix of a few different types of ethic foods along with a salad bar, a grill line and a desert bar. There are several more cafeterias on the Google campus, all of which are provided free to employees.
While we were at lunch I got some free but extremely valuable advice from Craig. As a former Luther Professor with his PhD in Chemistry, Craig decided while at Luther that he was going to return to school to get his PhD in Computer Science. I love hearing stories like this. I feel like it takes so much for someone to decide to change courses after being involved with something for so long. There is an enormous social stigma in the Midwest that discourages people from taking risks and changing paths. It is a scary thing for people to realize that they are not entirely happy with what they are doing. It is perhaps even scarier for these people to take the leap and start doing something different.
This is a fear that all college students battle with when they are attempting to choose their area of study. The standard question we all hear our conscience asking is “what in the heck am I going to do with the rest of my life?” This question, which plunges every one of us into a pit of despair, seems to be the favorite of many college alums and college parents. However, as Craig pointed out, this is the wrong question to be asking. The weight of a life-deciding question is paralyzing. We college students, and arguably everyone out there, need to be asking ourselves ‘what am I going to do for the next few years?' This is the winning question. By focusing on the present we shrink the consequences, ignore the paralysis onset by over analyzation and decide to act. Increasingly we find that our world is always changing and adapting. The variables that we consider in our decisions are constantly changing. We have to be able to change our colors to fit our current surroundings. Craig is a great example of a person that follows this type of philosophy and it has seemed to serve him well. This very lifestyle is the kind that I have discovered here in the valley.
After we finished up at Google with Craig we had a quick stop at the computer history museum to see a demonstration of the Babagge computer. The computer is basically a super old computer designed in the early to mid 1800's to calculate logarithmic equations. Then we left the museum and met up with Luther alum/ ex-accounting professor/ CPA/ venture capitalist, Al Brudos. An extremely successful man, Al was a great host and humble mentor. He described his past and the things that made him successful throughout the years. When questioning him about the absence of risk-aversion in the valley, he too gave us some great advice. Like many of the entrepreneurs in Silicon Valley, Al promised us that failure was not something to be afraid of. He insisted that there was nothing to be afraid of and that when you fail, you simply try something else. And so Al, like many of his Silicon Valley neighbors, reassured us that the paralyzing power of failure is simply an illusion. Things are never as bad as they seem.
We finished our night off with a tasty treat from Cold Stone near our hotel. Walking back to our hotel on the dimly lit streets of Menlo Park the lessons of selective ignorance when it comes to fear-setting paralysis in decision making began to sink in. I have seen a lot in Silicon Valley, but I think the experiences I have gained from exploring the attitudes of entrepreneurs will prove to be truly invaluable.
peace out!
Adam
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