An enjoyable read: I'm feeling Lucky. The Confessions of Google Employee Number 59

This is a must read book!

This book started off slow for me, perhaps because of my unfamiliarity with the geek terminology. However, as I continued reading, my interest was heightened.

The book begins with the author Doug Edwards joining a start up company called Google as its 59th employee and ends with his departure just after the company has gone public.

Edwards had been in charge of online product development at the San Jose Mercury News; he "saw newspapers as the first draft of history" and "grew tired of the struggles that went with dragging an old business into a new age." It was a stable job, with guaranteed income from a 150-year old media group; yet, he felt the pull of nearby Silicon Valley. 

He was offered a job at Yahoo and turned it down because of a poor salary.

He then does some research on Google and discovered that two of the largest west coast  venture capital firms invested $25 Million. So, after an interview that included quirky questions by one of the founders, he is hired by Google as online brand manager--meaning he's the guy in charge of the companies web page(s).  He has turned 41 and took a $25,000 cut in salary-despite the fact he has a mortgage to pay and another baby on the way. 

Once there he discovers the 'self invented' culture he is joining. Desks consisted of wooden doors lain across metal workhorses. There is unlimited food available in the on site cafe, doctors are on staff, many are the wild drinking parties and for his workspace "cables draped from the ceiling above an uncarpeted concrete floor in a wide-open space interrupted only by cement  pillars..."

Work titles mean nothing. Everybody is expected to help where ever and whenever needed. One of his early tasks involves spending a Saturday joining other clueless marketing, office staff and finance people at the Google data center aka a server farm. He describes the premises as an "extremely well-kept zoo, with chain-link walls draped from floor to ceiling creating rows of large fenced cages vanishing somewhere in the far, dark reaches of the Matrix." 

He joins an ops team made up of engineers to aid in maintaining the 1500 servers Google paid for hosting. He knows nothing, but just follows the commands of his team leaders. 

Edwards quickly learns that the founders Sergei Brin and Larry Page have a strong bias against spending money on traditional advertising.  Brin says he'd rather spend marketing money to innoculate 

Chechin refugees against cholera. 

End of Part I (to be continued).