INSIDE GOOGLE OFFICE BUILDING MOVIE
INSIDE GOOGLE OFFICE BUILDING CODE

Massage credits are given out as reward points to staff, Ms Baz. One of Ms Baz’s favourites happens twice a week, when Google brings in therapists to massage their employees in a specially decked-out room. Google’s Dubai offices are smaller than the Googleplex – although there are expansion plans – but staff still get their fair share of perks.

INSIDE GOOGLE OFFICE BUILDING CODE

These Dubai staffers mostly resemble young students, dressed as they are in jeans and trainers, according to Google’s flexible dress code and starting time policy. Rather than being glued to a screen, as you might expect at a tech company, most of the Googlers I see as I walk around the office are engaged in group video conferences. We are open and there are a number of values that we stand behind.” To a certain extent, it’s how likely you are to thrive in our culture. “I’ve been with the company for some years and only now do I fully understand what it is. Lino Cattaruzzi, who is managing director for the Mena region, says Googliness is unique. For Ms Baz, it means being humble, fun and taking ownership of your work. Google hires its employees based on their “Googliness”, which seems to mean different things to different employees. “In my entire career at Google, I can count on one hand the number of people I’ve met who did not impress me,” he says. “I had an engineer sitting opposite me who had an Oscar for visual effects on his desk, and we had a couple of astronauts in the office as well. But the best perk, he says, was the calibre of his colleagues.

INSIDE GOOGLE OFFICE BUILDING MOVIE

Mr Jarrar recalls the free laundry service and invitations to talks by visiting movie stars. “I used to live in San Francisco and we had shuttle buses with free Wi-Fi to take us to the campus – that was revolutionary back then.” “Even though you see the pictures beforehand, you still get a shock when you first walk into the Googleplex,” he says. Mr Jarrar, who is head of consumer marketing, was based at the company’s US headquarters before moving to the Dubai office in 2014. “We also want to keep that element of surprise and delight for the users, so details aren’t leaked.” “There are access controls and confidentiality agreements, as with any tech company,” says Jordanian “Googler” Najeeb Jarrar. Google is involved in a US lawsuit accusing Uber of stealing trade secrets. These rules might seem a little paranoid, but the stakes are high in the ultra-competitive tech sector. No video is to be taken, nor photos of the open offices. It tells me firmly not to discuss or share any confidential information I might see or hear during my visit. In reception, with walls that are decorated with Arabic newspapers, I first check in to a machine before I can enter the offices. The office was opened with a staff of five in 2008. Out of Google’s 70,000 employees working in 40 countries, about 150 are in Dubai – there are 31 nationalities and 40 per cent of them are women. I put the office’s Dubai Internet City address into Google Maps, and get into my car – which, if Google gets its way, a decade from now will be one that drives itself. I send an email – using Gmail, of course – to head of communications for the Google in Mena, Joyce Baz, telling her that I’m setting off.

Even going to Google’s Mena headquarters in Dubai involves quite a lot of, well, Google. It is hard to think of a company that has more effect on our daily lives than Google.

Inside google office building