3 min read
So today was my 1 month anniversary of starting at Google. There was no party but there was the usual New York TGIAF and Google-wide TGIF.
After spending 2 long and agonizing days stuck on a bug showing up in my unit tests, it finally dawned on me 30 minutes after coming into the office this morning. It was something pretty stupid too -- using the wrong method to add elements to a vector. Instead of treating it like an array I should have treated it like a list. I was pretty embarrassed it took this long to figure out but a) the error message was confusing as all error messages of new languages are and b) I'm still a noob at C++. I was excited to finally figure it out after it put me in such a rotten mood for a while but still I'm unhappy because I'm working at a tech giant yet getting stuck on trivial problems.
After fixing the bug and sending off the CL yet again for another review, I took another trip with a friend and my mentor to Chelsea Market. This time after getting gelato, my friend and I explored the YouTube office that just so happens to be in the same building. I went before to check out the office before leaving for Mountain View, but we couldn't look around much since they were filming something.
From visiting the Chelsea Market office last time
Yep, that's a Google claw machine with special Google prizes inside
The YouTube office isn't apparently just for developers working on YouTube stuff like I expected, it's for filming too. It has dressing rooms, sets, props, and even makeup rooms.
Me sitting in the makeup room waiting for my stylist
There was also a tour group going through when we were trying to look around. Even so, we came at a good time as there was going to be a production that evening so the office would have once again been off limits to visitors. I was still invited as an employee to go see the production but it was during TGIF and ended up being canceled for some reason anyway.
Googler traps -- they're kind of hard to get out of
Those lights are actually designed to look like balloons and they really do in person
The more interesting story was just the adventure we took to get over to the YouTube space. The YouTube space is a subspace of the Chelsea Market office. As such, getting into the office is one thing, getting into the YouTube office is another.
The building is kind of split into two sides which aren't connected to each other by passable means by Googlers besides the first floor -- the actual shops part of Chelsea Market. We had to figure this out the hard way -- even after repeatedly staring at the floor maps.
THERE IS NO ESCAPE
No, seriously, quite a few of the doors especially in the stairwell had no handles
"Why is there a treehouse in the office?"
(Obviously this wasn't taken at the right time)
There were quite a few other interesting things to see before heading back over to my own office to get back to work. After putting in another hour, it was off to the usual Hemispheres dinner, followed by my first game of foosball in a while before TGIF, which as always, never fails to amuse.
On my way back today after yet another late night hanging out at the office, I saw a mouse scurrying across the sidewalk and literally one minute later I also saw a cockroach. Gotta love NYC.