Okay thank you Google for validating me. For at least a few years, I’ve been thinking maybe there’s something wrong with me because of my lack of enthusiasm over the supposedly coveted pumpkin spiced latte marketed so thoroughly well by Starbucks. Finally, I can rest easily with my preference! 😉
New York City just approved a pilot program that will allow riders to hail cabs on their smartphones, paving the way for app-building upstarts trying to make the journey as enjoyable as the destination.
This should be a boon to Uber — and stranded cab riders everywhere.
This is great news. Uber and others are truly useful. It has been upsetting to see the taxi industry winning in their effort to stop this type of innovation. Good ideas should always be supported and embraced.
I wonder how long it will take Apple to just build the functionality to hail a cab into their maps? Oh wait, they fired the maps guy and their maps sucks. Okay, I guess Google will do it for us!
#1 on Google for something that really matters again!
The many perks of Google: gyms, massages, nap rooms, crazy-generous life insurance …
The AtlanticMany of the perks Google famously offers its employees are designed to help those employees enjoy a healthier life. Organic food in the cafeteria! On-site gyms! Subsidized massages! Nap rooms!
Turns out, though, that the company also wants its employees to enjoy a better death. More specifically: a wealthier death. In an interview with Forbes’s Meghan Casserly, Laszlo Bock — Google’s, Chief People Officer (in non-Google terms: head of HR) — shares a Google benefit that is all too literally out of this world. “This might sound ridiculous,” Bock tells Casserly. “But we’ve announced death benefits at Google.”
Yes. It’s like this: Should someone pass away while employed by Google, that person’s surviving spouse or domestic partner will receive a check for 50 percent of the deceased’s salary. And that spouse or domestic partner will receive that check every year. For the next decade.
Let’s just take a moment to pause and appreciate that. You can get rich at Google even through dying…
And the salary payouts aren’t the only death benefit Google has been providing to its employees’ families. In addition to the 10-year pay package, Casserly reports, surviving partners will get all stocks vested immediately. And any children of the decease, furthermore, will receive $1,000 a month from Google until age 19. Which gets amended to age 23 if those children are full-time students…
So Google is playing a long game — a really, really long game. And you could read its generosity not just as generosity, but also as an attempt to discourage employee mobility by fostering employee loyalty. Google, with all its perks, is treating its employees not just as employees, but as just what they are: investments. It hires top talent and then works to keep them at the top.
All companies SHOULD do this. You’re making a change to your life when you commit to something big. You’re changing your plans to help the company make things happen on theirs.
Yes, here we have some googly Whole Foods style Shawn Blog zen like one-ness…
#1 on Google for all the important things once again!
“if we look at zombies as a species”
Here’s the stuff some of you people are searching Google for that’s putting you on Shawn Blog today. I’m always befuddled by the person who types a fully qualified domain name into the Google search dialog.
Who does that?
…again, #1 on Google for all the important things here at Shawn Blog.
SHAWN BLOG BREAKING NEWS SPECIAL REPORT:
(from my inner geek)
Once again, Shawn Blog is #1 on Google for the stuff that REALLY matters!
http://www.google.com/search?q=what+am+i+going+to+eat+for+lunch
