Google, Eat Your Heart Out
When I made the decision to leave Google, I think the comment I heard most was “Man, how are you ever going to be happy at another job?”
I felt ok about moving, since I had a cushy Facebook offer waiting and they copied all of Google’s perks to steal their engineers away. Boy, was I wrong. Outside of working for the California Democratic Party, it was the worst job I had ever had. But that’s a story for another time.
I moved over to SugarCRM, and they had the very laid back work environment which I loved. They were flexible, and I often worked from home so I could spend the entire day slow smoking my pork ribs over a 6 hour period. My coworkers were *awesome*, and I had a blast with them every day. The only caveat was, that well, CRM is not exactly an exciting industry. It was like somebody bludgeoned the passion out of the company with a boring stick. But, I was still happy there (thanks to my coworkers), until they stuck us in a 9-10 hour/day, week long seminar where they had us working on code they would eventually integrate into the product. They told us it was just an exercise, though. Right, like we’d fall for that. Still, it wasn’t a dealbreaker - until a message on LinkedIn popped up with the seemingly innocent title of “Hello from Meebo!”.
I immediately tuned out the Sugar CEO’s boring speech and hopped onto the meebo.com webpage. You see, I had been getting recruiters reaching out to me from Yahoo, Netflix, Vudu, Sony, and Sequoia Capital at the time. I turned them all away, because hey, I liked Sugar.
But, Meebo struck me as different. They were fun. The product was awesome (I was a fan of it since ~05). I immediately poked around their “about us” page, and it just proved what I had guessed - they were a fun company with lots of passion, powered by the brains of intelligent and fun people. 15 minutes after the LinkedIn message, I was on the phone with a Meebo recruiter setting up a phone screen and talking about what they were looking for.
A phone screen and interview later, I was extended an offer from Meebo. I jumped on it. It was an offer of a lifetime. Don’t tell them, but I would have even taken a paycut to work at a cool place like Meebo.
So, what makes Meebo so awesome?
1) They pay for all my coffee, and lunch.
2) The people are fantastic. Fun, relaxed, and very smart with nothing to prove.
3) They value culture fit - a lot. One complaint I had for Sugar was that they never promoted up (bottom-up). They just hired random people that looked good on paper to take up management positions - no quicker way to destroy company culture.
4) An awesome bar is right below Meebo. You don’t even have to leave the building or go outside (no sunlight for us, please!) - walk down a set of stairs, open a door, and voila! You’re at the bar. $2 beers during happy hour, too.
5) See the picture above? I came home today after a Fry’s run to find a mysterious package in front of my door. Suspicious - since I wasn’t expecting anything. Kat and I made sure it wasn’t ticking or leaking white powder from the seams, and opened it up. It was a present from Meebo - a congratulations card, with fresh brownies two-day aired in from a shop in Boston. I was floored.
While Facebook and Sugar didn’t really come close to the peak of Google work life (2004-mid 2005), I can finally say I’ve found a place that exceeds all my expectations.
I heart Meebo!
