I found the following blog entry on a leaked memo from Microsoft about life at google really interesting:

http://no2google.wordpress.com/2007/06/24/life-at-google-the-microsoftie-perspective/

Basically, a new Microsoft employee, who formerly worked at Google, is dishing out all the info he can about his former employer to Microsoft so that they can better understand their competition. Some of the more interesting pieces of info:

* All of the food at Google is free – breakfast, lunch and dinner – however, they stop serving hot breakfast at 8:30 and they don’t start serving dinner until 6 or 6:30, thus encouraging people to come early and leave late.
* A lot of people don’t get around to doing their 20% project.
* The culture is very college-like.
* People tend to take their work home with them.
* Office space apparently sucks.

However, though this memo tends to try and put everything in a negative light, I still think Google has some pretty awesome perks. Hell, if Northrop Grumman served free hot breakfast before 8:30, I’d probably try and get in earlier, and if lunch was free I’d probably eat there instead of packing a lunch. In fact, I hope the whole free food thing catches on, because food isn’t that expensive and a large company could easily buy in bulk and save its employees some cash.

I also like the idea of free t-shirts and free soda. Though maybe I’m living in a dream world.

At Northrop we do get free brownies on Friday, however, that’s only because one of the ladies on the floor bakes them for everyone. We also have giant snack room, however, you have to pay for the snacks you take.

I’ve talked to many of my non-techie friends and they’re surprised by the perks I get, so maybe I shouldn’t be so selfish. However, I hope the trend of free stuff continues and spreads to other companies.