Café as corporate metaphor

Yesterday Jason and I were chatting on the way to lunch about, well, lunch. I noted that Google seems to be creating many new cafés in its buildings around the Shoreline area of Mountain View. Jason said that Google's café technique seems to match the way it does servers: have lots and lots of them.

I mentioned the café-coverage strategy of my Redmond-based former employer, which tends to build one big café per three new buildings. That's when we hit on the café as a metaphor for the companies we've worked for, then proceeded to have fun and stretch the metaphor completely out of proportion:

Google: many cafés, most of them small (like a cheap server) but with awesome food (great software). Lots of different kinds of cuisine (a healthy heterogeneous environment). Failover capabilities (e.g., "Charlie's is closed for a big meeting, so please have lunch at No Name today"). Meals are free (like most Google products). (And by the way, Google is hiring.)

Microsoft: fewer, larger cafés. Various kinds of food, but less variety. Meals are not free.

Apple: one café. Eat there.

IBM: the food isn't great, because it's outsourced.

Comments

[Gordon Meyer]

Ha! A fun metaphor. I'd only add that Apple's café is not free, but the food is great with a lot of attention to detail. :-)

[Mike Zornek]

Nice. :-)

[Anne]

I knew I liked google for more than its free stuff!

[Big Brother]

The same company provides food service for Microsoft, IBM and Google -- worldwide. Microsoft subsidizes the price, IBM does not. I don't know about Google. Apple operates food service themselves.

Philosophies show through in every area.