Members of the Business Club toured the Google Campus in order to experience the working atmosphere of a successful company and understand how such a large corporation thrives.
The club visited in 2 different groups, 1 on April 9 and the other on April 16. A maximum of 10 students were allowed to attend on each date. Club members who did not attend the same trip last year were given priority.
Heading to Google’s headquarters in Mountain View, students left school at 1:00pm. They arrived at the campus at 2:00pm and toured for 2 hours.
Co-president of the Business Club Jacob Ngai set up the tour. “I know a friend from Distributive Education of Clubs of America whose family friend works at Google as a programmer. We became friends after I talked to him, and he offered me the opportunity to tour the campus,” he said. “He gives us annual tours, so every year we can get some new recruits from Business Club to go there.”
“Basically, we were just walking around the campus. Albert Cheng told us a little about his job,” Ngai said.
Cheng explained what he does each day and the qualities or characteristics he looks for in potential staff members. “He told us what Google is looking for in an employee and how the interviewing process works,” Ngai explained.
“We learned that to be a computer programmer, it is a very competitive field. Google is a result of hard work,” Ngai added.
Students in the Business Club are also interested in computer science. “Most of the members in the club are also very interested in computer programming, so it helped them connect business and computer programming in the future,” Ngai explained.
“It helped us to understand what is needed to go into programming in the future,” Beck added.
The visits helped students understand the corporate work environment. “Personally, I really want to work at a big businesses in the future, so it showed me what’s needed to go into that field,” Ngai said.
They also learned that large companies provide unique perks to their employees. According to Ngai and Beck, the Google campus is an “adult playground,” complete with “food, swimming pools, and sleeping pods.” Ngai claims that these playthings “fuel their creativity for all of the big ideas they have.”
“It showed us that the business world is not as serious as one might think. It’s not as stressful as one might think,” Beck said.
“It makes me feel like I don’t need to worry as much, in a way, about functioning on the job,” Ngai said.
Additionally, the students discovered some quirky facts about the company and its employees. “Google and Apple compete in the smart phone arena, but most Google employees use Apple computers. This struck me as a little strange,” said Beck. “A majority of Google’s profit is from adds. About 80%, according to Cheng,” Ngai added.
Ngai believes that the annual trip is enticing to potential club members. “It really gets people involved in business if they know that they have the opportunity to go to Google. It might attract them to it,” he said.
