Wise Money Decisions

I saw a blip tonight on The Big Idea that Americans work more hours than the residents of any other industrialized nation. 

That might be true, but the Japanese actually have a word for death by overwork:

There is an effort in Japan to cut down on deaths from overwork, known as “karoshi.” Such deaths have steadily increased since the Health Ministry first recognized the phenomenon in 1987. 

I recently went to a Stanford Engineering Alumni Association seminar held at Google.  It was my first time at the “Googleplex.” 

My first thought when I arrived, “I’m back on campus.”   Jeans, long hair, rows of colorful umbrellas outside the cafeteria, volleyball, marker boards covered with marker-graffiti (I assume what I saw was the famous idea board, or one of them), nearly everyone is under 40 — just like the good ol’ days of grad school.

When you live around here you hear stories about the Googleplex and what it’s like to work there.  So I was prepared for some of it.

There were, however, two things I wasn’t expecting:  whimsical architecture and tight security.  The architecture is more colorful and whimsical than the link suggests.  For example, there is a building designed to look like one of the stories has fallen over and is leaning into the floor below it.  It creates a bit of an optical illusion.  

I couldn’t find a picture of it on the web.  If anyone knows the building and has a picture, and you don’t mind sharing it with the world, I’d like to post it.

As far as the security, as soon as I walked through a door there was a guard telling me where to go, and then he watched to make sure I went there.  At every door. 

After the seminar I hung out at the bottom of the stairs reading the idea board.  I wasn’t interested in the board.  I just wanted to see how long the guard would let me loiter.  I was there for 5 minutes.  Then I decided I had better things to do with my time than bait Google security.  I left.

It was fun to see this place that is the subject of so many stories. 

Here’s an aerial shot of the Googleplex.

Here are a few more shots from the central hub of the campus taken by a Google employee.  The pictures are a couple years old but it looks the same today.

KMC at Advanced Personal Finance has graciously introduced me to his readers.  So let me offer a warm welcome to Advanced Personal Finance readers!  I hope you will find something worthwhile here.

And to my small but growing audience, you should check out Advanced Personal Finance.  It is one of my favorite personal finance blogs. 

To give you a sample, I recommend his recent post about the circumstances that led him to leave his job despite not having a new job lined up and his wife about to deliver their second child.  Spoiler alert: it has a happy ending.