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| Angelika/Mike Schilli |
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Michael The companies in Silicon Valley provide their employees with various amenities to keep them at the company. It is well known that software developers are most effective when their behinds are warming the office chair. Rundbrief 11/2004 I have already reported about the traveling barber and the basketball courts on the Yahoo campus, as well as the washers and dryers at the Googleplex.
But the commute to work also costs nerves and valuable time. Since quite a few people (myself included) live in trendy San Francisco for image reasons and not in the dull suburban wasteland of Sunnyvale, located 40 km to the south, people sometimes accept commutes of an hour to get to the Yahoo headquarters. I travel by bike and train, but anyone who relies on highways 101 or 280 during rush hour can tell you how annoying it is.
For some time now, Yahoo has even rented buses that stop at selected points in San Francisco, pick up Yahoos, and take them to Sunnyvale. And in the evening, they go back to San Francisco. Fortunately, one of the bus stops is only about 500 meters from our house in the Mexican neighborhood "Mission"! I call that service! So if it rains, or if I just don't feel like biking, I simply walk down 24th Street at eight in the morning to join about 20 other Yahoos in boarding the "shuttle" there. The bus has wireless internet, so you can check your email and study the most important websites with your laptop.
The company Google, by the way, started this service, transporting its employees in black "Bauer" luxury coaches from San Francisco to the Googleplex in Mountain View and back. And the "Bauer" buses not only drop off the Googlers in the Mission, but they even go up to Noe Valley and continue late into the night! I've heard that residents have already complained about the noise, outrageous!
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