Ponies!
Mini is lamenting the growth in hiring at Microsoft; missing the “good old days”. But I’m not complaining. Yesterday, on my way across the soccer field, going from building 18 to meetings in buildings 10 and 2, what should I see, but … Ponies!!!
Yes, ponies, clowns, about 10 inflatable rides, a choo-choo train! Sno Cones, cotton candy. Then I didn’t wake up. It wasn’t even a dream!
They even had Chamillionaire blasting over on the half of the soccer field where young pony riders couldn’t hear the words. (And presumably, the parents were too busy checking their blackberries while standing in line with the tykes, that they wouldn’t have noticed anyway).
With all of the rainbow colors spread about, I couldn’t help but compare to the grassy area outside the Googleplex main cafeteria. Like the plex, I noted the shirtless young men on the sandy voleyball court, hoping to land a tot-manufacture contract with a suitably impressed female passer-by. In terms of beach-like atmosphere; the plex usually has the edge, but this day I think we won. For the 4 months that the sun shines here, California is a barren wasteland in comparison. And our open is just bigger, cleaner, and funner. And how can you compete with ponies in the background of your volleyball court? It felt like I had landed in a Seurat painting.
I think the primary thing you notice at the Googleplex, though, is age. Google has a lot of people who look like they are too young to have graduated college. Microsoft, on the other hand, has a lot of parents. I blogged about the MSFT baby boom about 6 years ago. But now it’s paying off. There were young people EVERYWHERE! All the way from 5 year-old princesses to clean-cut 15 year-olds I swear I saw last time I was at Google.
I don’t even know who threw this party. It seems we have some sort of crazy surrealism on the soccer field every Friday.