Log> Leaving Google

And like that, it's settled. I've resigned from Google. I have less than 20 office-bound days left, and after over 4 short years of long days, I feel liberated. From March 29th, I'll be on Temporary Retirement.

Excluding internships, Google has been the only company I've worked for, and it's been a brilliant start for a my working life. I hesitate to call it a career yet. Unless you've lived under a rather large rock for the last 5 years, you'll know that the growth of the company has been phenomenal, and I'm certainly lucky to have witnessed it form the quite early days. Without too much detail, it'll give you an idea of the growth if I tell you that my employee ID number is about 4% of the ID numbers being stamped on people joining the company today.

It's been a solid-gold resume builder and a learning experience, but I still can't say whether it's a more of a learning experience than any other top-class workplace. I don't have a reference point other than the different stages of the company during its growth.

Having lately worked a few days from the newly-established Helsinki office I can say with confidence that I prefer small organizations, and so seeing Google grow from the inside and being a part of that growth has had more negatives than positives for me personally. Even when factoring in the growth's impact on my financial compensation (having started as an intern and not being granted performance-based incentives from very early on, yes, here's a hint of bitterness for you).

But not even when I joined was Google really a cute-and-cuddly startup. Google was managed in quarters already when the IPO was still just a glint in the corner of an analyst's eye. There was the amount of red tape and process and procedure I'd expect from any Valley company. The free lunch in the early days of Mountain View was certainly much better than what is served today, but this is just simple kitchen economics. And the lunch in MV is still stellar. Even London has become palatable.

I'd still recommend anyone interested to apply and work for Google. The people are cool. The atmosphere is warm. The pace of work certainly depends on what you do, but it's no different from other places from what I hear. Get it done yesterday. Management processes, the corporate voodoo of reports, presentations and meetings are all over the place, which seems to hold with most companies that exceed a certain size as far as I can tell. If that's you, good, go for it. Provided I'll work for someone else, it need to be somewhere smaller.

And I know it will be seriously career-limiting, but I don't think I ever want to work anywhere where I'd have to use PowerPoint. Pie charts must die.

Log> Marathons in hot and cold

A colleague of mine is running (literally) a marathon-campaign called EarthFireIce as a charity project to raise awareness of global warming. They are aiming at getting a million pledges on the website (which is due to open later today, hence me linking to the blog above - do pledge!), and the twist of the project are the two marathons the guys will run in the Sahara and later in the North Pole.

Admirable grassroots activity. The blog also documents Sean's training for the first marathon, even in spite of not being able to run for some time. Godspeed, guys!

Sounds> 6000th song in iTunes: Midnight Black Earth

My 6,000th song in iTunes ended up being "Midnight Black Earth" by Bohren & der Club of Gore. The album itself is "Black Earth". Occasionally jazzy, mostly menacing, dark, dark, dark ambient music for the blackest moments of the night. The leathery wings of melancholy this music spreads are so powerful that there's even something quite uplifting about it.

Coincidentally, the album happens to be available over here.