Editing 192: Working for Google

{{comic
| number    = 192
| date      = December 4, 2006
| title     = Working for Google
| image     = working for google.png
| titletext = I hear once you've worked there for 256 days they teach you the secret of levitation.
}}

==Explanation==
Many look up to {{w|Google}} as the ultimate workplace in the IT business. Therefore, they have lots of applicants but can afford to be very selective, and only the best and brightest succeed.

In the first panel, the guy at the computer asks his friend (both look like [[Cueball]]) what he thinks about working at Google HQ ({{w|Head Quarters}}). His friend starts out by dismissing Google as a "corporate idea factory," but from the rest of his speech, we can infer that these are not his true feelings. He is exhibiting the attitude known as "{{w|sour grapes}}," where you criticize something that is out of your reach, or that has been denied from you.

In the last panel, it is revealed that the friend has been trying very hard to get a job at Google, even resorting to bribing the interview panel by baking them a cake "shaped like the Internet."  This misguided action is a sign of how much he wanted a position.

Since the Internet does not have a defined shape, it is difficult to visualize exactly what he baked. The comment was maybe foreshadowing [[195: Map of the Internet]] that came out a week later. It would, though, be a more interesting cake if it looked like the map in [[256: Online Communities]], but that came out 20 weeks later. Another possibility is that the comment is a reference to [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iDbyYGrswtg this video], in which the black box shown is supposedly the Internet. If this is the case, then the cake would have been shaped like the box in the video.

The title text says that if you work for Google for 256 (2<sup>8</sup>) days, you get to learn how to levitate. This displays some of the mystique with which Google is commonly viewed. The joke here is that 256 is bigger by one than the largest value a single byte can hold, as has been demonstrated with the [http://errors.wikia.com/wiki/Pac_Man_-_Infamous_Kill_Screen_Bug 256 Bug]. However, Astro Teller, the director of {{w|Google X}} labs, a Google division that researches "moonshot" projects, has mentioned in an [http://www.businessweek.com/articles/2013-05-22/inside-googles-secret-lab#p4 interview] that they contemplated starting a levitation project.

==Transcript==
:[A guy sits at a computer and addresses his friend standing behind.]
:Guy: Have you read about Google HQ? It sounds like an incredible place to work.

:[The friend throws his hands in the air as he delivers this speech:]
:Friend: Man, I ain't going to be chained down in no corporate idea factory! They think just 'cause they've got a nice building and laid back culture, I'm gonna want to come in all day long and work on fascinating problems with the smartest people in the world.

:[Close up of the guy staring at his friend.]

:[Back to the original setting.]
:Guy: So, what, they turned you down?
:Friend: I don't understand it! I even baked them a cake shaped like the Internet!

==Trivia==

* Interestingly, it took Cueball about a year to [[353: Python|learn the secret of levitation]] anyway. That comic was published on December 5, 2007, 366 days after this one, so not working at Google only slowed him down by a bit over three months.

{{comic discussion}}
[[Category:Comics featuring Cueball]]
[[Category:Multiple Cueballs]]
[[Category:Google]]