Managers in Hot Tubs and in Hot Water

A MONTH AFTER WE bought Deja, a hundred and forty Googlers packed up overnight bags, boarded a fleet of buses, and headed for the hills. It was time for Google's annual ski trip.

The ritual started when Google was just eight people and Larry very cautiously drove a rented van to Lake Tahoe while Sergey, Craig, Ray, and Harry killed time playing logic games in the back and Heather struggled to stay awake. The group saved $2.50 a day by designating Larry the only driver, which was a given anyway because Larry wasn't about to put his life in anyone else's hands.

I didn't go with the group in 2000, even though frequent reminders from Heather made it clear that the ski trip was not optional. The trip was a teambuilding exercise and thus only for staff members. No family. That didn't sit well with Kristen, who had already seen enough at Google to have reservations. The tipping point may have been the day she came to lunch and noticed an attractive twenty-something woman whose thong underwear was all too visible through her sheer harem pants.

"Who's that?" my wife whispered directly in my ear as the woman slid her tray past the entrées toward the desserts.

"Oh, just one of the engineers," I replied. "She rides a motorcycle," I offered helpfully.

So when I let Kristen know that Google required my presence on the slopes at Lake Tahoe for an employee-only bonding trip, what she heard was, "please stay at home with our three children while I head out with a busload of adrenaline-charged, hormone-drenched post-adolescents for three days of bacchanalian binge-drinking, substance abuse, and room-key swapping."

She got it mostly right. I know, because the next year I convinced her my career would be damaged if I didn't go along. Google paid all our travel expenses, including chartered buses and food and lodging at the elegant Resort at Squaw Creek and gave us each a fifty-dollar stipend to spend on ski lessons. It wouldn't cost me anything, and it was only for a couple of days. Please honey? Please?

We shared accommodations to save money and I roomed with Bay and our newly hired attorney Kulpreet Rana. Bay got the short straw and slept on the floor. While I'm proud to say I was so hopelessly unhip that I missed out on anything more decadent than a late-night soak in an outdoor hot tub with Larry, Salar, Urs, Omid, and a dozen other Googlers, it was clear some of my coworkers were showing less restraint.

I heard tales of excess involving not only recent college graduates but those who theoretically had the years and experience to know better. Many of these tales coincidentally began with a visit to "Charlie's Den"—the room Chef Charlie occupied with Keith from accounting and an SUV load of liquor ferried up from Mountain View. As the trip grew in scale and Charlie's hospitality grew in reputation, the party relocated to an oversized luxury suite and then a meeting room with an open bar sporting seventy-five thousand dollars' worth of booze and an ample supply of other social lubricants. Specialties of the house included herb-infused brownies and dark chocolate Goo Balls.^* Out of coincidence, or perhaps the perverse humor of Heather and the HR folks managing the event, Larry's room was usually adjacent to the party plex. One year all the liquor was unloaded into Larry's suite by mistake. Larry didn't drink, though he sometimes carried a thimbleful of beer at parties to put others at ease.

"My mind is money," Larry once explained to Charlie, pointing to a bottle, "and that kills the brain."

"I think he could spare a few brain cells," Charlie told me later.

Other members of the executive staff more willingly sacrificed bits of gray matter, and Charlie made sure their rooms were stocked with their favorite indulgences in case they didn't make it to the party down in the Den.

"It's always cool to see people let loose and have a good time," Charlie observed, confirming the opportunities for staff bonding. "Googlers really let go in ways you wouldn't have seen otherwise." He may have had in mind the toga-wearing ops guys who were only too willing to prove they were unburdened by underwear. Or maybe the sales rep who jumped on the back of another Googler, pulled off her shirt, and began whipping him with it jockey style. Or perhaps the senior manager seen crawling on all fours in the hallway, barking like an inebriated hound.

There was a pajama party with costume prizes. Larry won a bet with Sergey, Salar, and engineer Lori Park that ended with the losers jumping into an icy Lake Tahoe after dinner.

"We tried to re-create Google's 'un-corporation' attitude," Charlie explained to me, "a kind of 'fuck you' to the man, the way Google was saying that same thing to the tech industry as a whole."

Some people who visited Charlie's Den never left, crashing on the floor for the night, though that carried risks of its own, since passing out left one vulnerable to the sophomoric pranks of those still sober enough to stand. Others couldn't remember where they had fallen: one engineer woke up without his clothes and eventually discovered he'd left them at the hot tub. He sheepishly reclaimed them from the front desk. All night long, white-terry-robed figures circulated from room to room, then down to the bar or out to the boulder-shrouded spa, in Lupercalian celebration of the season.

As the company grew in size, more non-engineers participated. Many were female. The Google ski trip came to be known as a great party to crash, with live dance music from bands like the Fabulous Thunderbirds, ample alcohol, and lots of young, unattached people looking to undo the stress of Silicon Valley lives. Uninvited guests were legion.

I uninvited myself after my first trip, and found myself working uninterrupted in the Plex as phones went unanswered all around me. I walked interview candidates down empty hallways and ate pizza I ordered in for the few of us still around. Ski week became my time to clear my inbox and catch up on lagging projects.

By 2007 the size of the company made the annual ski trip impossible, and Google ended it in favor of smaller outings to more family-friendly locales like Disneyland. That was probably a good thing, though I'll always cherish the scars I earned at broomball^* and the camaraderie of shared experiences on the slopes and in the lodge. My warm feelings, however, stop at the hot tub and chats by the fireplace, and accordingly may not be as heated as those kindled by some of my friskier colleagues. You'll have to ask them about that.