Report from a new Google technical writer

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Report from a new Google technical writer

I’m a Noogler! Now that I’ve been at Google for a couple of weeks, I’m managing to drink from the fire hose without spluttering too much, and I’m learning my way around the technology. I’ve even published a “hallo world” documentation update.

So, what’s it like working at Google? It’s just plain awesome. The people are friendly, inquiring, bright, welcoming, intense, very very smart, and fun. The technology is coolth instantiated. What strikes me most is the scale of things. Google is huge, in every respect: in the numbers of Googlers, customers, and products, in the daring and innovation evidenced in the products, in the beauty of the office spaces, and in the welcome given to Nooglers like me.

I’ve spent the past two weeks doing orientation classes, meeting people, and learning how to use the in-house tools. I published my first documentation update. It was a small change to the page on usage limits in the Google Maps JavaScript API. To make the change, I had to find my way around the bug tracker, version control, editing, and publishing tools.

I’m based in Sydney, where much of the Google Maps development team hangs out. One week after starting work, I hopped on a plane to California, to meet the rest of the team. “Visiting the mother ship,” Googlers call it. The Google main campus is in Mountain View, about 60 kilometres south of San Francisco.

Have you seen the movie The Internship? I haven’t yet. I guess it’s a “must see” for me now!

This photo shows one of the Google buildings on the Mountain View campus. For more photos, visit my bookworm’s blog: Google in Mountain View, CA.

The Mountain View campus is big. It takes half an hour to walk from one end to the other. After doing that a couple of times, I plucked up the courage to try one of the Google bikes. Googlers pick them up and drop them off as needed. You can tell them by their colours:

At this point, there are two burning questions in every technical writer’s mind:

Will I have to start using US spelling and syntax? I guess so.

Do Googlers like chocolate? In answer to that, I’ll just say that my manager took the team to visit The Chocolate Garage in Palo Alto. What a great experience that was. We tasted such a variety of chocolates, from caramel-like smoothness to suprising saltiness. My favourite was the Madagascar 67% dark chocolate with habañero sea salt, made by Patric. As it touches your tongue, you feel the sharp salty bite of the chili. Then the chocolate kicks in, and the effect keeps changing until it leaves your taste buds feeling refreshed and ready for more.