The Googleplex already has a reputation as being a kind of Emerald City within Mountain View—pet friendly, masseurs on staff, Lego-topian mindsets—but the best company to work for has kept one perk relatively quiet: Google University’s School of Personal Growth.
It’s not really been a secret, the principals have mentioned it when out and about spreading inner peace, but a Google search for Google University won’t bring back the results one is looking for. Only available on the company intranet, Google University—the building down the road from the Googleplex—is available only to Googlers. And, one imagines, patchouli salesmen.
The School of Personal Growth has gained some attention thanks to a couple of obscure statements by two of the school’s founders, Monika Broecker, who left Google last year to start her own Center for Personal Growth, and engineer Chade-Meng Tan, otherwise known as that guy who gets his picture made with every famous person to walk through the doors, a Buddhist and buddy to the American Dalai Lama.
Chade-Meng Tan w/ Bill Clinton
Broecker namedrops Google at her new website: “At Google, I had a dream job. I built and led the School of Personal Growth within Google University, it’s mission, strategy, curricula and programs. This was very inspiring. I now want to bring this mission to the whole world, individuals and companies.”
What’s the mission? According to Soulscode, it’s all about happiness. Tan joined a number of psychologists, neuroscientists, social workers and Buddhists at a conference to identify Happiness and Its Causes—part of that apparently being taking control of one’s hysterical amygdula. Tan explained further:
“Google wants to help Googlers grow as human beings on all levels. Emotional, mental, physical and ‘beyond the self’… (This) is why Google University instituted the School of Personal Growth, perhaps the first of its kind in a large corporation. We don’t just pamper Googlers, we want to help them fulfill their full human potential.”
Hopefully it doesn’t involve sneakers, jumpsuits and comets. (Yeah I know. We mock what we don’t understand. But I do get it, and it’s still pretty funny.)
With classes available entitled “The Neuroscience of Empathy” and “Search Inside Yourself,” Broecker said the end goal is to help Googlers be more creative by helping them be more relaxed and open to new ideas.
No word yet on whether there’s a Timothy Leary Memorial Auditorium or guest appearances by Dr. Richard Alpert. But one bets Be Here Now is a vital part of the curriculum.
