万花筒 Kaleidoscope 2007-06-03&04, 美国最好的雇主公司:Google

At first, you'd think you were back at college. It’s 11 am, and these googlers are hard at, well, anything but work. A few yards away, others soak up the late morning sun. It’s certainly a unique office environment. But according to Fortune Magazine, this is what made Google the best company to work for in the United States.

Coming here to the Googleplex in mountain view California, it’s easy to see why. For staff here, there are a lot of perks 2. Like a well-equipped gym, on-site massages 3 and medical care, transport, ranging from company-provided scooters and pushbikes, to a massive fleet of shuttle buses and free food. It’s all part of a plan to attract the best and brightest. Now Stacy Sullivan is Google’s chief culture officer. Flashy job title, but bottom line, she is the architect of the company’s human resources strategy.

There is many reasons people want to apply to a company or to a position, and probably first and foremost will be, you know, for the work, I wanna go someplace where I will be doing something really interesting, really challenging, really unique, and in a, and in a product that I believe in. But then, combine that with, you know, here it's a really cool place to work, I hear there are really great benefits at work that will actually help me be more productive during the day and have more of a life when I get home. Because I won’t have to do my dry cleaning, I won’t have to get my haircut outside of work. I can go to the doctor while I am actually at the office and I won’t have to leave for meals. And so I think it’s a really big factor, but just, it is just one of many.

The formula is working. Google gets over 3000 job applications a day, from people wanting to join teams like these. And to keep staff happy, there seems to be almost no restrictions 4. Another perk 1? They get what’s called 20% time, a chance to spend a day a week working on independent projects. This has spawned 5 some of Google’s successful spin-offs including Gmail. And at the office, apart from some funky 6 design that includes white tents for colleagues to meet, googlers appear free to do their work any where. An environment designed to encourage employees to be googly.

This is kinda like being smurfy, if you are a smurf, if you are a googler, it’s, you know, it means having a positive corporate 7 culture that’s not too corporate and not too specific, it kind of shifts as googlers shift and allows you to do everyting from kind of bring your dog to work, to question authority, and work on the type of projects that interest you.

Well, Brett recommends one of the primate’s salads here at the no name café, this is one of eleven gourmet 8 restaurants here at the Googleplex. I am trying the Kasha, Blood Oranges, Goji Berries, and Cinnamon Salad. With all these foods and all those other benefits, I wonder if one could leave the company.

It’s a great question. I don’t know if I can work anywhere after, after Google. I think after Google, you'd either have to retire, or kinda going to start at them.

Kristie Lu Stout 9, CNN, at the Googleplex.