Google's culture is built to replace your out of work time with time on Google campuses and ensuring your friends are other Googlers. Work-life balance for Google is just living at Google.
Add that everything you say probably means your work life is also unsatisfying... I mean, nothing makes me happier about my work than when I get something done.
People say this all the time about Google and it simply doesn't reflect the reality I've seen working here.
Yes, there are cafes and they serve dinner. There is a gym and a game room and other perks. And you know what? At dinner time, there's only a handful of people eating and the rest of the office is a ghost town.
I'm sure that some people do end up with their life revolving around Google. That's probably particularly true for people who got hired right out of college and moved for work. But most people I know seem to have very balanced work and personal lives.
I think people love the idea of a narrative that everything that appears nice about working at Google is actually secretly sinister and is making Googlers miserable but, like, maybe it's just a good job, you know? Maybe they offer all the perks because competition for software engineers is high and it helps attract talent.
Obviously, there's many valid criticisms of Google, as there are with most companies their size. But it's not a supervillain fortress full of trapped minions or something. It's just a huge corporation that found ways to make a lot of money per employee thanks to the magic of software and data. In industries where the marginal cost is zero and competition is still high, this is what you should expect to see.
I worked at Google for a few years.
I have the best Google food memories from "The Root". I remember the day they served the most delicious duck I've ever had, and the day all the food was Klingon themed. The food was a nice perk, but I really miss the gym. A few coworkers and I had a standing appointment with a trainer. A coworker also ran a weekly yoga session. It was also easy to bike to work. It all worked because of the on-site showers.
I left to give a smaller startup a shot. I've been there 6 years, and the project continues to keep me engaged and fulfilled. They wrote meals into my employment contract, which I thought was pretty funny. They've followed through with it, although it's not as nice as having dozens of themed cafeterias. I've struggled to consistently hit the gym the last few years because of the relative inconvenience. It's my own lack of self-discipline, though, rather than any pressure from work.
I don't know your situation but I find discipline to be not very helpful as an explanatory variable: it's not something you can meaningfully change. What you can change is the overall environment, such that it's easier to do the thing: have an appointment with a trainer (or set some other time, even before/after work on particular days helps), attach a meaningful goal (weight loss, strength standards), etc.
Work-wise, I have pretty much unlimited schedule flexibility. I have a lot of seniority, and people needlessly fear me for my reputation. My immediate manager is someone younger than me that I helped hire, and he's in the gym probably 4x a week. I went in with him a couple weeks ago and he absolutely wrecked my shoulders in a good way. The problem is that his gym is half an hour away. I can't fix that without moving, and I own a house and have a family. My local gym is a joke, and isn't staffed. I bought an exercise bike a couple years ago, and have maybe ridden it once a month on average. I've owned free weights for years, but the last time I touched them was four months ago when I crushed my fingernail bad enough to go to urgent care. I wasn't even working out, I was moving them back into storage...
I think I am justified it blaming myself for lack of self-discipline. I lost about 8lb since November by calorie counting, due to having elevated liver enzymes. I've gained about half of it back since my enzymes went back to normal though, because it lost its relative importance. My best guess it was due to a medication rather than my weight, and I changed medication. I have a serious and rare medical condition, and the medication I'm taking is probably going to give me cancer in a few decades, so if I'm going to motivate myself to do something it's playing with my daughter or a hobby. If I obsessively worked out, maybe I wouldn't even have the medical condition, but that doesn't seem to be something I'm capable of right now.
10 years ago I got really depressed at work and started working out 3x a week with Herbalife "health coaches". I ached and was hungry all the time and it was great. I was 40lb lighter than I am now, and could do 100 pull-ups. I know I'm still physically capable of doing that, yet it also seems impossible. Laying on the couch reading hacker news seems more important most of the time.
You have lots of seniority, implies a good income thus likely a larger dwelling.
You have free weights at home.
> I think I am justified it blaming myself for lack of self-discipline.
The harsh side of me agrees with this. You have all of the material resources to set up a really cool training setup.
The empathetic/caring side of me disagrees. "Self-discipline" is certainly a thing, but you are also dealing with a medical condition and maybe your body shouldn't be working out in the way that your rational mind thinks it should, plus you want to be a good father to your daughter. Plus, your regular workouts seemed to always have a social component.
Your sub/unconscious needs will dominate whatever "self-discipline" you try to consciously apply.
That's the diagnosis. If correct, the prescription I offer is:
Find a way to do "workouts" which involve your daughter.
I started taking my son to the gym when he was 8, he was doing freeweights. He'd help me count reps. When it was his turn to lift, I stressed 1) low weight high reps (like sets of 30), 2) technique, 3) stop before exhaustion. Kid is eight, skeleton is not built for weight-bearing, so cannot stress it with heavy things.
"workouts" could also be walks, preferably in the park/in nature with your daugher. If you want to make it really physical for you while still keeping your daughter's pace, buy a goruck backpack and put 20lbs in it, then 30, then 40. You don't have to walk fast to exercise when carrying a heavy ruck. Your daughter stops to smell a flower? So do you, bend over to sniff the flower--- while wearing a 40lb ruck. You'll get your workout, all while exploring the world at a child's pace.
I exercise about 4x/week, and work remotely. If I owned a home + some barbells, I would space out my schedule to take 2-hour lunches, and get a workout over the lunch break. This would give me enough time to do meaningful exercise, clean myself up, and microwave my prepped lunch for when I sat down again.
I also expect 90% of people to find that whole idea strange or unreasonable.
Fitness comes down to finding some physical activity that you enjoy, or can comfortably perform multiple times per week. I like big, 'chunky' barbell work, such as deadlifts and overhead presses, but used to solely do cardio. Some people like rock climbing, or hiking, or biking. So long as it's a physical activity, it's likely able to be counted as some kind of fitness or exercise.
If you only have the energy for fitness/exercise 1x or 2x a week, then that's all you need to start with. It won't do very much, but is a great starting point for building a stronger habit without overloading yourself.
You don't need to answer these to me, but if you end up going forward with fitness, you'll probably have to answer them for yourself:
What kind of physical activities do you enjoy? Do you have any fitness goals? Are there any weird aches or pains you have that might be lessened with regular exercise? How many sessions are you willing to commit to in a week? Are you willing to follow a healthier diet?
Maybe they offer all the perks because competition for software engineers is high and it helps attract talent.
How does offering perks that people don't actually use attract people? Surely people clever enough to work at Google would see that those things aren't really perks.
Works the same as every apartment building with a rooftop deck and a shared lounge that almost no one ever uses. People see it and because it looks like a resort they move in but almost never use them.
I look at the perks a role offers and ignore any that don't apply to me, and I'm nowhere near clever enough to work for Google. I'm just a bit surprised that people who work at Google wouldn't do the same.
And that culture was blown out of the water when everything shut down and you were sitting at home all day.
That said, while I think "offices with every perk you can think of" is definitely a part of Google culture, the "living at the office" stereotype really only applies to younger folks. Once you have a family, living in a van in the Google parking lot and showering at the gym doesn't really work.
I worked there with an intern who happened to be in his 40's. He was previously a professional athlete, and decided to get into engineering. He owned a gorgeous ranch in Montana, with his own baseball diamond, outdoor bed, and enough land that the neighboring farmer leased it for planting.
He was living in a crappy studio apartment in the bay area. He decided to try and save money by buying an RV and live in one of the known Google shanty towns in an unused office parking lot. We all teased him that he would never find a girlfriend without real plumbing. He lived there for about 6 months, until security politely asked him to leave because the company wanted to start using the parking lot.
>"He decided to try and save money by buying an RV and live in one of the known Google shanty towns in an unused office parking lot. We all teased him that he would never find a girlfriend without real plumbing"
This whole passage had me in stitches. I'm glad I asked. I may never heard the phrase "known Google shanty towns" again but I will probably never forget it. Cheers.
When I interviewed in pre-pandemic Mountain View, there was a section of the parking lot with around 6 RVs parked next to each other. I couldn't believe my eyes.
Maybe they did it long enough to save up money for a house.
Complete nonsense. I can’t even reach most of my coworkers by chat after hours. Everyone in my office is gone before 6. This may be true for international workers or recent grads who don’t have families or friends local, but in my experience this stereotype of Googlers living on campus is mostly apocryphal and from the dot-com and 00s eta. I heard the same thing about Netscape, people working 100 hour weeks, sleeping under their desks.
The Google of 2022 has over 150k employees, the culture is way different than say, 2007. The average age of the employees these days is older.
Maybe in Mountain View, but even then: it was never that many people who stayed after hours (I worked there for years, then transferred to SF, where even fewer people stayed/stay late).
I remember a friend showing me around the FB Campus and there was a gym, a barber shop, a Mexican restaurant with bar and I think a drop off laundry place and dentist. I know it was meant to impress but I was horrified by the subtext of all that i.e that it was really just required because people spent so much time there.
I would love to have a gym, barber, dentist and laundry all in the one place.
Commuting to those places really isn't time well-spent for me, so the faster I can get in and out, the better.
Restaurants and bars is getting a bit iffy, because that's an inherently social activity and I think you need wider horizons than a hundred fellow Metamates.
Add that everything you say probably means your work life is also unsatisfying... I mean, nothing makes me happier about my work than when I get something done.