Ahead of NYC HQ, Google voted No. 1 place to work

NEW YORK

Getting hired at Google is kind of like winning the lottery. The search engine giant is stepping up recruiting efforts for its new headquarters in Chelsea.

When Google took over a building in Texas, it turned a typical office space into something colorful and creative.

Several hundred people work there, surrounded by windows, bright colors and a unique Texas flavor, including an Airstream trailer as the front desk.

"All of our conference rooms are named after musicians," one Google employee said. "A lot of the themes within the conference rooms are LPs and eight tracks and the history of the music industry."

Multiple cafes offer employees healthy food and drinks, for free. There's a piano lounge, a massage chair room, art boards and hangout areas with pool tables, ping pong, board games and shuffleboard.

"It makes it feel more like they're at home," a worker said. "We work hard, but we have fun."

Perhaps that's why Fortune ranked Google number one on its list of great places to work.

Today, Google has offices all over the world, including one in Krakow. Managers credit the Fortune ranking to hiring great people, offering good opportunities and developing a corporate culture where people want to work. But with all the perks, you might wonder how does work get done?

"We hire the best and the brightest, and they're self-motivated," one manager said. "And we're all focused on goals and results and so they know what we need to get done, and we leave it up to them to balance that time."

A work environment like that gets a lot of attention. In fact, Google says that each year it gets about 2 million applications. Last year, they hired just 7,000 people around the world.

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