December 23, 2003

• i hate xanga.  i have to remember to copy my posts before submitting them - for the thousandth time xanga lost my entry as i tried to submit it.  anyways, let me try to do this again.

  today was our big move-in day to the new ebay campus in san jose.  while the campus is nice, this was a day most of us were dreading.  here are some of the reasons why:

  assimilation into the corporate ebay culture.  until now we had our own office in mountain view.  even though we were acquired about a year and a half ago, we stayed in our mountain view office and retained an independent and autonomous culture.  this allowed a sense of continuity and familiarity to remain - even with rapid growth in the last couple of years, you'd still be able to recognize most of the faces in the office.  as a part of an ebay 'campus', you can't help but feel that a bit of the paypal identity is lost.  the bigger buildings, the giant parking lot, the anonymous faces, the company cafeteria - all of this only makes me feel like i'm no longer part of a small up-and-coming company but rather a giant conglomerate.

  move to a drab location.  my commute time is about the same, but our new locale (first and guadalupe) is a far cry from castro street in downtown mountain view.  we went from having multitudes of shops and restaurants to having a denny's and a mcdonalds.  a big downgrade indeed. 

  loss of free food.  this is the big one, in my eyes.  we had a virtual farmers' market onsite - free food galore, including breads, bagels, fresh fruit, snacks, candies, deli meats, catered dinners...and even weird stuff like soy milk, power bars, and protein supplements.  needless to say i've gained a few extra pounds in the last couple of years.  it was strange earlier today at work - i had no incentive to stay late since there was no dinner coming in!   

  of course, there are some positives.  the new campus does have nice athletic facilities, such as a fitness center, tennis courts, basketball courts, and sand beach volleyball courts.  and i did get an upgrade in cube location - i went from a very loud area near the kitchen to a nice window cube on the end of an aisle.  so maybe the loss of free food and the addition of athletic facilities will finally force my lazy butt to start cooking and exercising.

  our move was accentuated by a lovely 6.5 earthquake this morning.  the epicenter was close to 200 miles away so we didn't get hit too hard, but you could definitely feel the building rolling back and forth.  

  • 1:57 am
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