I dreamed about those cruiser bikes down at the baylands last nights, the ones Google, a huge sprawling campus of buildings, provides for its employees to use. I could see myself soaring down the soft, rolling hills of the baylands, the wind whipping against my face, and I could feel how exhilarating and free it felt – it’s been a while since I’ve been on my bike. Mine sits out on the patio, needing to be fixed for ages now. I let my daughter Megan’s exboyfriend ride it and he messed it all up.
And today I head for the baylands to that sprawling “Google world” campus down at the baylands in Mountain View, to the area where the Canada geese and the avocets and killdeer birds hang out, where there’s miles of open space and water. I’ve studied the map of all the buildings to figure out where I must go – building 1965. Yes, I received the email from Google inviting me to an in-person interview. That was after a 30-minute phone interview with a recruiter. Now I had to talk to four different people for 30 minutes each – no point in going to work at all today for all that. I’m nervous and excited all at the same time, and just yesterday while sitting in Chile’s with a bunch of my coworkers for one of our long-time paralegals, Dawn Salazar’s, going away party I happened to see John van Loben Sels wander by with a bag that looked like his lunch. John and I worked together at two different law firms – he brought me over to Dechert from Quinn Emanuel, said I deserved to make more money. He was right, of course. Now John doesn’t even work where I’m at – he’s a partner at a small firm down the street from Dechert and I only see him occasionally.
But I’d contacted him just a few days ago because I wanted him to be a reference for me. And of course he was happy to do it
Me and Sarah, one of the attorneys, happened to see John so we both ran outside to talk to him for a few moments.
“And I thought this would be your going away party,” John said when we told him where we were at.
“Hey, I don’t have the job yet. It’s just an interview,” I laughed. Looking over at Sarah uncomfortably because I hadn’t really shared with very many people at work that I was going on a job interview. Sarah was cool though, and I knew she wouldn’t tell anyone. If she did, oh well. I guess it’s always a risk to do these sorts of things – to go for better opportunities.
I remembered how I’d taken a limited duration two-year job when I worked for the State of Oregon back in the later 1980’s, how everyone had advised me against it because I was a single mom with three young children and needed stability. But even though I was “okay” as a clerical specialist in Claims Coding, that limited duration two year job in Word Processing was exactly what I needed – I wanted to be a word processing technician and this would be my ace in the hole. So I took the risk and jumped for it not listening to anyone but myself and it turned out to be one of my best moves.
Within a year, that limited duration position became permanent and I was able to reclassify as a word processing technician – a move that would forever change the course of my career such that it is…always able to fall back on a position that some say is going away.
“But we desperately need a doc specialist,” the recruiter at Google had explained to me. “The paralegals are trying to do it themselves!”
I shuddered, knowing exactly what that meant. Nice to know that out of the thousands of jobs Google has, one would be a “legal document specialist” position – but who knew I’d be one of 75,000 people applying for 6,000 jobs!
So I’m focusing on those cruiser bikes and the baylands today as I head down there to the sprawling Google campus where you can easily get caught up inand even a Google world…free meals at their state-of-the art cafeterias, a massage therapist and even a chiropractor on site. Heck, you can even bring your laundry to work because they provide free laundry – oh and did I mention the oil changing services.
The one disconcerting thing that came to mind for me is – once you’re in Google they never want you to leave! It’s like getting caught in the vortex, forever spinning around in the abyss…
But never mind all that.
I’ve got big interviews to attend today…