Riccardo "Battlehorse" Govoni
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04-Dec : The foosball philosophy
As a Google engineer, I could tell you any sort of things about the challenges we’re facing and what people, team members and management expect from us (even if, after having been here for three weeks, my productivity isn’t yet exceptional , so the previous statement is nonsense in relation to my current situation :-) ). But, to be honest, there’s only one thing that really matters once you work for Google: be an excellent foosball ( aka Table Football ) player.
You may be the greatest developer in the world, but if your foosball skils suck, then your life is going to be much much harder. Foosball-compliance is a must in Google: you must love it, devote part of your time to it, study it, and adhere to the strict non-written rules that apply.
If, for whatever reason (it’s not really important what it is, since you’re on the wrong side anyway), you don’t like foosball and you stick in your belief that you don’t need it, then your career plan will be put to sleep until the hell freezes over (probably, I’ll try to have some senior manager confirming this sentence).
The rules can be summarized as follows:- no employee should play less than 3 times per day.
- matches must be organized in a strict round-robin full-mesh 100%-coverage style, so that every permutation of players is correctly verified (otherwise test engineers will complain all day about your poor assessment of game strategies ): considering players [ A1, A2, B1, B2 ] , and considering a 4-size array with roles [ defenders-blue, attackers-blue, defenders-red, attackers-red ], you HAVE to play all these matches : [ A1 , A2 , B1 , B2 ] , [ A1 , A2 , B2 , B1 ] , [ A2 , A1 , B1 , B2 ] and [ A2 , A1 , B2 , B1 ]. Appropriate test-coverage tools are in use to enforce this rule.
- spinning is strictly forbidden. But distinguished developers and old-time google gurus can violate this rule, nobody will ever complain with them about it. To be honest, nobody will ever complain with them at all, foosball-related argument or not.
- hangs ( or whatever is the english name for this move) are a sign of great experience and are highly appreciated. The more of them you can concatenate in a single move, the more your colleagues will respect you. If you’re clever, you can continue passing the ball from one player to the ones on its sides until the opponent gets bored and decides to go away for a coffee. At this point, your chances of scoring are increased by a factor of 2.3234 (as demonstrated by the repetition of all functional test before and after the coffee).
- power shots are strongly appreciated. The more louder is the bang of the ball against outer walls, players, and whatever else, the better. If the ball is hit so hard than it flies outside of the foosball field, your colleagues will consider you a master. There’s also the possibility of the ball flying down the elevator shaft (I’m on the eighth floor). If it happens to you, you will be promoted to Senior VP honoris causa.
- if you loose one match 10-0, then you have to withstand some sort of punishment. The winning team can decide the kind of punishment from various choices, including crawling under the table, 8th-floor to ground level and back using the stairs and traversing the atlantic ocean with a kayak.
No Googler will ever confirm or deny the statements on this page (everything is still under confidential agreement, but I’m doing a personal favor to you only).
3 Comments to this page
E'già complicato il regolamento...non ho speranze. E poi io frullo e faccio i ganci!!!!!!
ROFL :) Instead of 'hang' I would call it 'hook', but still it is so funny that it is considered a sign of great experience
Fantastico, allora qualche possibilità di diventare google developer ce l'ho anch'io!