Clutch­ing my pip­ing hot cof­fee, I peered out of the Star­bucks, strain­ing to see the far end of the build­ing that dom­i­nated the entirety of the block across the street. From my per­spec­tive it was impos­si­ble to do so, cre­at­ing the illu­sion that the struc­ture went on for­ever. This per­cep­tion was obvi­ously mis­lead­ing. The edi­fice that houses Google’s New York office, the company’s sec­ond largest, is not infi­nite, merely mas­sive. After spend­ing a day with Googlers in the office, how­ever, I’m not so sure the same clar­i­fi­ca­tion can be made regard­ing the ambi­tions, and the poten­tial, of the com­pany they comprise.

In the years since its foun­da­tion, Google has turned a kooky numer­i­cal value into a house­hold word. As such, I was clearly aware of the company’s impor­tance as I under­took the day’s adven­tures, but the point was merely ham­mered home as Seyi, the other Princetern, and I stepped off the ele­va­tor to find our­selves caught up in packs of tourists apply­ing their vis­i­tor pass stick­ers. Com­bined with the sight of employ­ees zoom­ing by on scoot­ers, being with my fel­low vis­i­tors ratch­eted up my excite­ment sev­eral notches. I felt I’d stepped into one of the coolest places to work in the world. I don’t think I was wrong.

Raj Hathi­ra­mani ’07 was our host for the day, which began with a brief look around a few floors of the office. The Google work­space is in of itself a work of art. Open and free flow­ing, it makes the most out of the unique archi­tec­ture of its space, which used to be home to the Port Author­ity. As Raj pointed out, very few of Google’s employ­ees have closed offices, and truly opaque doors are almost nonex­is­tent. It is truly a com­mu­nal work­space, con­ducive to inter­ac­tion, coop­er­a­tion, and lots of hard work. This atmos­phere is inten­si­fied by the reg­u­lar pres­ence of incred­i­bly well stocked snack bars and lounge areas, com­plete with pro­fes­sional grade espresso machines, for which there is an intro­duc­tory oper­at­ing class. The first of these areas that we walked through has more Legos than I have ever seen in my life, and col­or­ful toys and games are a ubiq­ui­tous pres­ence around the office. Even though I didn’t actu­ally see any Googlers play­ing with them, by their very pres­ence they light­ened the mood of the space, suf­fus­ing it with a live­li­ness that seemed to make its way into all of the bustling employees.

After our brief look around, we sat in one of these com­mu­nity spaces to chat a bit more about Raj’s posi­tion within Google’s Sales Ana­lyt­ics depart­ment. Par­tic­u­larly fas­ci­nat­ing was his expla­na­tion of AdWords, a prod­uct I knew very lit­tle about. See­ing the inside work­ings of AdWords gave me a new appre­ci­a­tion for the tech­nol­ogy I take for granted, and the ways in which my jumps around the inter­net are quan­ti­fied, noted, and then used to opti­mize my adver­tis­ing expe­ri­ence, both while search­ing Google and while perus­ing more gen­er­ally. The gen­eral Inter­net adver­tis­ing mar­ket is poised for explo­sive growth, much of which is being spurred by the work tak­ing place at Google. Raj dis­cussed these devel­op­ments, as well as his role in a small global team that con­ducts rev­enue analy­sis and opti­miza­tion for the dis­play busi­ness, for­mu­lat­ing rec­om­men­da­tions for sales and prod­uct teams based on their findings.

This team-focus was also a theme of the day, as we met with sev­eral of Raj’s co-workers to dis­cuss their roles in Google. The first such meet­ing of the day was with Lau­ren Car­pen­ter ’06, a Senior Account Man­ager who works with dis­play ads, which include the fun ban­ners that you may have seen above YouTube videos. Lau­ren spoke to us a bit about how she pitches dis­play ads, strate­gies she uses to build client rela­tion­ships, how her Prince­ton expe­ri­ence has informed and con­tributed to her work at Google, and why the orches­tra she runs and plays in out­side of work is named after King Herod’s daugh­ter. It was the first of what would prove to be sev­eral engag­ing, infor­ma­tive encoun­ters with Googlers.

The sec­ond was with Jesse, an Account Direc­tor at invite­me­dia, an orga­ni­za­tion Google recently acquired.  He was able to talk to us about some of the chal­lenges of cre­at­ing and run­ning a start-up, a process he has been inti­mately involved with sev­eral times, and some of the details of display-ad trad­ing. The eas­i­est trans­la­tion he made for my layman’s ear was that dis­play ads can be traded much like stocks, and that his par­tic­u­lar work has been in invent­ing and pol­ish­ing sys­tems whereby this trad­ing takes place. It was very cutting-edge stuff, and was another ter­rific oppor­tu­nity to glance behind the cur­tain of Oz.

After these meet­ings and a bit of gen­eral ques­tion time with Raj, we headed to Google’s cafe­te­ria for lunch. I was in no way pre­pared for the boun­ti­ful cor­nu­copia of delec­table edi­bles that awaited me, and I think an employee or two actu­ally con­fused my eyes for the cafeteria’s plates as I ogled at the plen­ti­ful options. To avoid too exten­sive a reverie, it will suf­fice to say lunch was deli­cious. We were also able to chat with Raj a bit more about his Prince­ton expe­ri­ence, includ­ing his time as an RCA and with Naa­cho, his inter­na­tional job expe­ri­ence, and his Iron­man train­ing. I found out later that he was lit­er­ally a leg­endary RCA, and the descrip­tion for his old room in Walker men­tions him specif­i­cally as one of the room’s great­est res­i­dents: quite an inspi­ra­tional fig­ure for a bushy-tailed Prince­ton sophomore.

From lunch we sur­veyed a bit more of the office while con­tin­u­ing our dis­cus­sion, includ­ing a jaunt to a dig­i­tal library that may have been the coolest thing I’ve ever seen. The entire wall is a screen depict­ing a cir­cu­lar book­case, which one rotates with a sim­ple wave of your hand along the screen’s sur­face. Select a book, and set­tle in. There were also nap-pods behind the shelves, although evi­dently for light­ing, noise, and heat rea­sons they are infe­rior to the nap­ping sta­tions that are installed a bit higher in the build­ing. This kind of del­i­cate, detail-oriented care for employee well­ness amazed me through­out the day, and I wouldn’t hate to see some of these ele­ments adopted in areas around cam­pus, for instance, in my com­mon room.

We had a chance to look at the engi­neer­ing side of things when we met with Michael Schid­lowsky ‘01 who works on Google Docs. Although some of the tech­ni­cal things he went into were some­what over my head, he pre­sented us with a fresh per­spec­tive on Google, and the ways in which a Prince­ton edu­ca­tion can impact work expe­ri­ence. He also proved to be a font of gen­eral advice, some of which I have already taken, and more of which I intend to pur­sue in the futureTo wrap up the day, we met with Arnaud, who works with Google.org, the non­profit arm of Google that man­ages a fairly huge amount of non-profit work. I had no idea what Google.org was until doing a bit of research on Google for this Princetern­ship, and I was fas­ci­nated to hear more about the kind of sup­port Google has for non­prof­its, as well as its own pro­grams. It is def­i­nitely a resource that I will be keep­ing in mind as I con­sider work in a non­profit sector.

And with that our day at Google wound to a close. It was a fairly rev­e­la­tory expe­ri­ence, and one I am incred­i­bly thank­ful to have had. It was fur­ther con­fir­ma­tion that the sort of skills we learn here at Prince­ton, and par­tic­u­larly those acquired out­side of class, can be put to use in a busi­ness set­ting. Google is exactly the kind of casual but hard-working envi­ron­ment I find myself drawn to and inspired by, and being sur­rounded by thou­sands of moti­vated, ded­i­cated peo­ple going about their work was an invig­o­rat­ing expe­ri­ence, pro­vid­ing just that extra bit of moti­va­tion to get through the finals grind.