Help
Sign In
culture
April 2007 
Creating a Culture That Laughs
Posted on Apr 12th, 2007
by 
Motto
Motto
(Crossposted from www.whatsyourmotto.com)
Kevin Salwen on Passionate Work
The folks at Google have already been lauded aplenty for their amazing corporate culture. It's earned them the top ranking on Fortune's Best Places to Work list, not to mention the cream of the crop when recruiting. After all, who doesn't want to work in an environment in which employees can connect play to creativity, be treated as free-spirited grownups and make a darn good living at the same time. As we pointed out in Things We Like in the March/April issue of Motto, Google also has a great sense of humor. You can do a search speaking like Elmer Fudd (I'm Feewing Wucky) or Pig Latin (I'mway Eelingfay Uckylay).
My fave new discovery: Google's hilarious directions for getting from a U.S. location to any city in Europe. I won't ruin the joke for you; just type in your address, enter Paris, France, or Rome, Italy, as your destination and see what comes up. Just make sure you read through the directions that your request generates. Go to Google maps and click on Get Directions.
Creating a company in which employees have the time to play on products like that -- and then build them into their key search tool -- might be one of the smartest management decisions I've ever seen. Work as Play, Work as Life. It's the ultimate golden handcuff. And it comes at a time when Google employees around from before the IPO could easily take their millions and leave, since their options are ready to vest. My bet: the company loses far fewer employees than others would have.
Access: Public
