The perks of working at Google: employees reveal how they lived on campus to save money

WHO needs to pay for food and rent? Google employees reveal how they saved thousands of dollars by taking advantage of the company’s perks.

THINK your work is great because it’s got a vending machine? What about a company where there are so many perks it could save you paying for rent, food and hot water?

This is what some Google employees say they have been doing, claiming to be living on the company’s campus and taking advantage of the generous amenities laid on to avoid forking out for life’s overheads.

On the question and answer website Quora, a thread asking “Which Googler holds the record for living at Google HQ?” it received answers from current and former employees detailing how they managed to make camp and save themselves thousands of dollars.

“There was this one guy that had a camper parked in the parking lot near Crittenden,” wrote one employee. “The guy lived in the camper for 2-3 years. Showered at the gym. Did his laundry on campus. Ate every meal on campus he could. After the 2-3 years, he had saved up enough money to buy a house. It was simply brilliant!”

Company philosophy states that free food and drink is never further than 150 meters away from any desk.

Even though ‘sleep pods’ and hammocks are dotted around the office technically employees aren’t allowed to sleep at Google. But staff found that by sleeping vehicles on the ground they could crash without too much worry.

It’s not all fun and games. Well, maybe a bit.

Brandon Oxendine, a former Visual Designer on the Google Profile, managed to swerve having to pay rent for months: “I lived in a Volvo station wagon for about three months in the parking garage below building 1900. I set up a twin mattress from Ikea and put up black curtains (on the 90% blacked out windows) and slept there mostly every night for three months until I moved in with my buddy.”

Just grabbing a quick snooze at a Google rest area.

One person on the thread claims he slept for weeks at the company as part of a dare. “We would hold regular parties at the RV on Thursdays when the weather didn’t suck. I had an astroturf lawn and white picket fence for a while.”

But while some might have been doing it for a bit of fun to see how far they can push it, some were there for more serious reasons. One Google programmer, Ben Discoe, who couldn’t afford the high rental prices in San Francisco’s South Bay as well as his divorce payments was forced to set up home for over a year.

“I had a house payment (on my farm in Hawaii) and alimony to pay. No money left for South Bay rental prices. I got a 1990 GMC Vandura custom conversion van for $1800 (blue velour, wood paneling, previously tricked out by a burner) and that (roughly speaking) was my entire rent for the 13 months.”

That’s so Google.

But surely someone from security would have noticed, right? Ben went on to explain: “It is very likely technically in violation of some obscure code or city ordinance. Google Security came by very early on, but once they determined that the guy in the mysteriously parked white van was just an eccentric Googler and not the Unabomber, they never came by again.”

There’s no denying working at the Googleplex is very unique, but this is a side Owen Wilson and Vince Vaughn forgot to enlighten us to.