I paid a visit to Google & Facebook HQ for my ‘Refresh Vacation from NHN’
The ‘Refresh Vacation’ is one of the super cool benefits of working at NHN. The company pays you certain amount of money according to your salary when you take the ‘Refresh Vacation’ which is provided bi-annually. I could use full 10 days of it, yet I only used 5 days to pay a visit to the sacred ground of the Internet, Silicon Valley, California. Well, I visited two most strongest Internet service providers, Google and Facebook.
At Google HQ, I was really touched by the company’s dedication to the employees. I know there are many posts regarding what Google is doing for their employees, such as, awesome free foods, Wonka style mini kitchens, endless swimming pools, foosball tables, gyms with trainers, juice bars, etc. Yet, there is huge difference between reading about it and experiencing it. Even though two engineers I had lunch with complained about the lunch since they were used to it already, yet, oh my, it was awesome!!! It was exactly like Charlie Wonka’s Chocolate Factory where you can eat everything. (Well, you cannot really eat their cubicles, though.;-P)
Other than their awesome foods and play things, I liked the founders motto; let the machines do the work. I think that is their key recipe of expanding their franchise into overseas easily since their core algorithms can be reused without much customizations. Their strategy worked just fine for the most of the countries except in Korea where Naver (by NHN) dominates the market with 65% query count market share as compared to Google 2%. For us, NHN, our extremely satisfactory search result is a double edged sword since it is based on the heavy customization for the Korean people. IMHO, it is somewhat hard to transfer our strengths to the overseas directly. Yet, we will get better fast, so, watch out, Google! 
At Facebook HQ, I saw Mark Zuckerber, the founder of Facebook, in his tiny office with a big window to the inside of building, not outside. It means that his office had no view but all the employees could see what he was up to. Well, I was lucky enough to see the 25 years old young blonde CEO contemplating with his chin propped on his hands. Wow! He is actually 5 years younger than me but his company is considered to be one of the strongest competitors of the Google. That really shocked me since he looked very fragile and weak.
After the short tour, I had a dinner with a service operator. Facebook, too, provided employees buffet meals and mini kitchens. Yet, I think they had to that because there were not many places to dine. Their food was great, too, but unlike Google, they only had a cafeteria which provided a different menu per meal. (BTW, when I visited there, they were having Thai foods.) Providing free foods is a very little thing yet, IMHO, it contributes big time for the employees’ morale and loyalty to the company.
One of the unique insights from the conversation with a Facebook service operator was that she envied the Korean model of identification which forces to put social security number because it helps to identify the actual user easily. She said that it is hard to ban an abuser since he/she can rejoin the service with a different email address. I felt it was somewhat too much to get the social security number, yet, after the conversation, I had to think again.
