The Google Complex - who works in a place like this?

There is a reassuringly retro noticeboard in the basement of Google's new East London ‘Campus’ where the young tech entrepreneurs of the future exchange jobs news and hawk their skills.

Handwritten notes from founders of putative startups are pinned to the corkboard, seeking the services of the new generation of young people schooled in jobs that didn’t exist when they were born. If you don’t know what a ‘full stack developer’ is, you are probably over 40, and unlikely to find gainful employment here. A young woman called Vicky has gone so far as to pin up a self-drawn sketch of her pretty face along with a declaration of her willingness to try anything, of a technical nature.

The Google Campus, just off Shoreditch’s ‘Silicon Roundabout’, has been open for only six months but already seems established. It is not really a campus at all, but an old office building, fashionably minimalist in its décor. More than 4,000 would-be tech entrepreneurs have signed up, and so gained the right to sip exceptionally good coffee and pretentious blends of tea in the Campus café. Most are London-based, but increasingly they travel from the provinces, and more recently from Eastern Europe, to schmooze with like-minded aspirational types. ‘In terms of technology startups and tech activity, London has lacked the density of San Francisco,’ explains the Campus head, Ezequiel Vidra. ‘The idea was to provide a space for people to meet, to work and exchange ideas.’ Google bought and fitted out the building and gave over four of the six storeys to East London micro-tech hub companies who provide desks and Wi-Fi.

But really the draw is not the quality of the hot drinks, or the table football, or even the networking opportunities. The draw is the Google name itself, which has a special kind of magic in the ephemeral world of tech startups. Although it has only been going 14 years — quite an age, of course, for any technology company — it is worth a staggering £155 billion. Its Mountain View HQ in California is a mecca for people who understand that the future is networked; and we have our own powerful outpost in the capital, Google UK, in Belgrave House, Victoria, where more than 1,500 acolytes have been sworn into the Googleverse. The company relentlessly seeks to expand its empire — purchasing YouTube, setting up its own TV channel, mapping every inch of the planet. Britain is Google’s largest market after the US, and Google UK is a hub for Europe, the Middle East and Africa. Like a sponge the company is soaking up the best employees the UK has to offer. So should we be scared, or should we all be begging Google for a job?

Vidra is a characteristically cosmopolitan member of Google’s London staff. Born in Argentina, raised in Israel, educated in the States, he fine-tuned the idea of the Campus during his ‘20 per cent time’. The notion that one-fifth of the working week should be devoted to matters other than your core job has been a tenet of Google office life ever since the company was founded in Silicon Valley in 1998. Some staff use their 20 per cent to work on ‘outreach’ schemes with schools or universities, organise mass cycle rides in support of various causes, or help curate science events at museums. A quarter of Google’s London staff have volunteered to spend time at the Campus mentoring the future stars of the tech world. As one member of staff puts it, Google bosses like their staff to have a ‘hinterland’, perhaps because they are fed up with the geeky image of those who work for tech companies.

Few would quibble with such good works. Setting up a new media hub for impoverished but motivated future entrepreneurs seems an entirely sensible and worthy project for a company like Google with its famous ‘Don’t be evil’ corporate slogan and bulging cash reserves. ‘I don’t talk numbers,’ says Vidra when I ask how much the Campus has cost, ‘but it’s millions.’ Google’s benevolent tentacles spread widely around the UK: the company donates substantially to the Science Museum, and to Bletchley Park, where £550,000 bought Alan Turing’s papers for the nation and the restoration of some of the dilapidated huts where the German Enigma codes were broken during the Second World War.

Critics of the company point out it can well afford to hand out vast amounts of feelgood cash because it pays virtually no corporation tax to the British government — it is formally registered in Ireland, which has much lower rates. In the last financial quarter, Google’s UK revenues, which amount to 11 per cent of its global revenues, were £730 million, yet last year it paid only £6 million in UK corporation tax. And it was striking that last week at the Labour conference, Ed Miliband took aim at millionaires, bankers, Rupert Murdoch’s ailing newspaper empire, but not at Google, which aggregates and places adverts against what remains of the global, dead-tree media industry.

Others are wary of the faintly culty, northern Californian ethos of the company. Staff refer to each other as ‘Googlers’, while, in an echo of boarding school lingo, new hires are known as ‘Nooglers’. The benefits are sensational, including delicious free dinners in the staff canteen, gym membership, massages, and, of course, options on Google’s buoyant stock. There is a ‘peer bonus’ system, whereby staff can nominate colleagues for a cash payment for doing particularly well on a project. ‘It’s a small cash amount,’ says one member of staff, ‘but it’s nice.’ Women having babies are granted six months’ maternity leave at full salary — much better than most media or tech companies — and are paid a special baby bonus of a few hundred pounds for takeaways, nappies and pampering luxuries during the first few weeks of motherhood.

You aren’t going to thrive at Google if you don’t embrace the mission and adore the product; there is an implicit obligation to be evangelical about the company. A potential employee will be interviewed by up to eight managers from different departments, any one of whom is empowered to veto the appointment, in the manner of deploying the black ball at a gentlemen’s club. ‘There is a lot of emphasis on cultural fit. Volunteering will be a plus,’ says one member of staff. Once in, you are subject to weekly feedback from your line manager, and quarterly assessments against specific targets you set yourself. Staff post their diaries on an open page so everyone knows where everyone else is at any time, and when they are available. After two successive poor quarterly assessments you might be shown the door, though Google is apparently good at corrective intervention in many cases.

It is earnest, and though its ethos is declared to be transparent and selfconsciously informal, Google can also be bossy. In the lobby of the Campus there is a sign reminding members that smoking is not permitted anywhere on the premises, or within 25 metres of the building. This impertinent assertion of Google’s control over a stretch of the capital’s public highway is significant for it has echoes of the company’s biggest public relations fiasco.