I Loved You, Google
I know better now.
February 2015, Scotland. Otherworldly, just the right setting for Ridley Scott’s aliens. For us humans, it’s too “brutal, cold and wet,’’ says Scarlett Johansson. And yet here I am, dancing in my room to the sound of the howling wind outside. A Google recruiter has just told me I’ve been accepted to the APM program. That day 5 years ago, everything changed.
I moved to Zürich, quickly learning that 1) you can reach every corner of Switzerland by train, and 2) not doing grocery shopping on Saturday means starvation on Sunday. In the Maps Transit team, I developed a life-long appreciation for public transport icons. In the Calendar team, I became an expert on all the different ways Microsoft Exchange breaks industry standards. In the Geo User Generated Content team, I realised that the entire world was now at my fingertips, longing to be queried. And I fell in love with Tokyo; here, I am infinite.
The 4.5 years at one of the world’s best employers have been magical. And it’s not just about the compensation, the transfer opportunities, or the free lunches. At Google, I worked on products loved by billions. “Impact” doesn’t even begin to describe it. At Google, I met hundreds of extremely talented, kind, and inspiring people. It’s pretty damn awesome to build stuff with colleagues who are heaps smarter than you.
