By now folks have probably seen the news about Google purchasing LinkedIn’s old headquarters for a cool $1 billion in “the largest Bay Area real estate sale in 2018.” Some of the old-timers might remember when LinkedIn shared that space with other companies. Some of the really old-timers might remember Research Libraries Group (RLG), in particular. RLG eventually ended up relocating their staff to San Mateo after merging with OCLC ~10 years ago, but once upon a time they occupied space in 2029 Stierlin Ct.
Why am I bringing up a now-nonexistent library consortium? Well, because in a previous life I worked for OCLC. In fact, I was there for the entirety of the 5- year merger period so I had the opportunity to work with some of the RLG employees. One of these employees was Judith.
When I eventually moved to Mountain View to work for LinkedIn, Judith saw my profile update and started up a conversation. Her main reason for reaching out was to see whether I knew a UX person who would be a good fit for an open position she had at the time, but we hadn’t spoken to one another in a few years so we spent a little time catching up. Inevitably the conversation turned to the campus - the buildings, Steven’s Creek trail, and of course the ever- present Google employees in the area. Judith asked me if I was fed up with the Googlers going to-and-fro on their primary-colored bikes, disobeying traffic laws, and just generally making a mess of traffic on Shoreline Drive. My response was twofold: (1) I walk to work down the Trail so the traffic on Shoreline almost never has any impact on me, and (2) we occupy a handful of the buildings at the end of the court now, we have our own fleet of fixies for LinkedIn employees to zip about the neighborhood on…Judith, in short: we are now those assholes!
Anyhow, seeing news of the purchase just got me a little nostalgic so I thought I’d share. Happy Thursday!