at 1 Hacker Way in Menlo Park looked idyllic and peaceful – perhaps too peaceful.
The parking lots were nearly empty mid-workday. Shuttle buses had begun cycling in to return workers to San Francisco, but all was fairly quiet. On the rear side of campus, some employees climbed the Meta-provided rock climbing walls and others practiced soccer on the campus’s built-in fields – even as tech stumbles, some campus perks persist. I continued on to happy hour.
When I asked around where to grab a drink, Steins Beer Garden & Restaurant was a popular answer. Indeed, the recently laid-off Googler I spoke to at Coupa Cafe told me that is where he and his colleagues had gone to commiserate after job cuts. I ordered a drink and sat outside, where work teams were seemingly meeting for company happy hours.
At several tables, artificial intelligence was the center of conversation. I had heard it several times earlier that day: the classic Silicon Valleyisms – “deliverables”, “scalability”, “innovation” – applied to a new space, portending as always in this city another cycle of boom and bust. As I signed the check for my dinner, I overheard some tech workers next to me talking about other cities they had visited to do business – a hot topic as companies like Tesla and Oracle