Today was back to the streets of Dublin and another site visit, this time at Google’s European and African HQ in Dublin. However, before our site visit, we had a bit of free time in the morning to explore Dublin and some unique sites we only looked at from the outside on our walking tours last week. One of these sites was Dublinia, a museum of the Vikings and their impact on the city of Dublin, as well as the Christ Church Cathedral. It was a really cool experience for us to get to walk through an interactive wax museum to learn about how Dublin began as a city run by Vikings, and how life would have looked inside the walled city, a segment of which still remains right down the street from our apartment complex. We also got to wander inside the crypt below the Christ Church Cathedral, which was an interesting piece of history that you don’t often get to explore.

Later in the day was a big switch up from the history lesson of Dublinia, as we visited Google’s Headquarters in Dublin. Like Microsoft, their headquarters were more than impressive, with multiple amenities like a dining hall that changes menus everyday and full gym on pool directly on their campus. These amenities, which include so much more than only the short list given here, reveal Google Ireland’s relaxed culture seeking a better work-life balance for employees. While Microsoft did have some of these amenities, it was not nearly to the scale that Google focused on all of these. This is not to say the two are completely different. Throughout both company tours, our guides spoke a lot about their company’s focus on sustainable practices. One way Google is achieving this is through their FailteFest (WelcomeFest), in which they partnered with companies to set up events to welcome in the employees who have not had the opportunity to work in the office during the pandemic using all-renewable materials. They also had an entire subdivision focused on analyzing and reducing food waste in the cafeteria. The companies are also similar because they hire heavily from outside of Ireland. While our tour guide today, Ailbhe, was Irish, our other guide Arthur was from Brazil. Ailbhe talked about how she was only a small percentage of people actually hired from Ireland, and people from all over the world were hired to work right here in Dublin, similar to how we experienced so many different cultures in Microsoft.

One of Google’s main focuses that differ from what we learned at Microsoft was the idea of lifelong learning, making their employees more well rounded. One of the programs that allow them to do this is a Learning Week, where employees get to stop work and take part in classes in whatever subject they choose. Google will also pay for employees to partake in some classes fully free of charge (for the ones that aren’t fully paid, Ailbhe said they could usually find a way to work around it by saying it helped them with their job), and encourage employees to try to learn new things about the world and perhaps about themselves. This was a really interesting aspect that I didn’t know about Google before touring the office, and it was really interesting to see how they weren’t just focused on immediate results and productivity, but also helping its employees for their future.