Changes!

I learned recently that not everyone is aware that as of September 19, I'm working at Google's San Francisco offices, in the old Hills Brothers Coffee building on the Embarcadero. I'm now writing documentation for the Google Cloud Platform (GCP), which is our equivalent of Amazon Web Services and Microsoft Azure. I'll be working on networking documentation. 

Yes, this means I can talk about what I do again. It's a public project with world-readable documentation. Yes, this means it's a lot easier to have lunch with me, because you do not have to schlep to Mountain View or my most recent South Bay location, Sunnyvale.

Career development and that schlep were the primary reasons I transferred. My commute had gotten to ninety minutes to two hours door to door each way, up from around an hour and ten minutes each way when I started and during the Great Recession. I realized I had to get out of the commute back in August when I found myself making up a spreadsheet of companies I'd be willing to work for. If a suitable position hadn't opened up in S.F. this year, I would have left Google.

Now I stroll down to the major intersection nearest my house, get on an AC Transit bus, get off a while later, and stroll a few blocks to my office. It's taking less than an hour and is a lot more pleasant than BART is these days. Boy, is it ever nice to sleep until 7 a.m. again.

The view above is not from my desk, although I am sitting by a window. It's the view from one of the cafés in my building. Here's the view from my desk, along with a neighbor: