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Comment by ikiris | Hacker News Reader

The buildings were designed for much more open access prior to security policy changes that made most of the useful paths exit only.

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Oh man, is that something that changed in the last few years? One thing I always liked about the Mountain View campus is that every door, no matter how minor, had a badge reader on it, so you could always take the most direct path between two possible points.

At the same time, there were a lot of stories on the internal social network about people walking in behind them, so I kind of get why the policy might have been changed. I would have been one of the people mad about it!

(I posted one of these following-me-in stories once; I unlocked the door and someone pushed me out of the way to go into the office ahead of me, and I didn't see their badge. I tracked down security, they reviewed the tapes, and it turned out to be a legitimate coworker. I shared the story with the angle "this is what you should do if someone follows you in", but I got panned for not doing enough to protect my coworkers. I probably didn't post this, but my takeaway was "if your security depends on me being able to beat someone up that is larger than me, you're already dead". One of the few times the internal social media hive mind turned against me, and it was really really weird.)

I think it was a kneejerk to the YouTube shooter.

There are also now rules about how many badge readers need to be between public and private areas. This turns into a mess in historic buildings that have technically-public stairwells littered throughout. (The Munich campus is particularly bad for this.)

Ah, I forgot about that incident.

In the NYC office, when I was there, we definitely had to badge in from a lot of stairwells. Also, the bathrooms that weren't completely contained in Google spaces had number pad locks on them.

(I was very annoyed when I worked on a floor that didn't have any dedicated Google-only bathrooms; I asked to have the locks removed just out of principle and was told that "people will wander in from the street and set up camp in there." You had to badge into the building though, so I wondered how true that actually was. I wish for once in my life someone would just tell me the truth instead of making something up to get me to go away. "We don't feel like paying someone to disconnect them, and other tenants in the building will complain if we do." That's totally fair!)

There are floors in One Market that are the same and equally nonsensical. The kicker is that Google stocks them with tampons and toothbrushes and all that, even though they're communal, which makes the locking even more silly.

There's an internal social network?

Like, what do people post on it?

There's an internal google plus instance whose culture is kind of like a mix of Facebook and Twitter, and an internal meme site. Occasionally, some real work (setting up collaborations with colleagues) happens on the social network.

>Facebook and Twitter

That's gotta get axed or Google will stagnate even more than it already is.

Then again, I'm not sure what can come in and usurp its place as a "global-leader-company". Maaaaybe Tesla if every single little thing goes right for them (and that's a stretch)?

Or perhaps, the way things are going lately, a defense company... I hope not.

So... Google Plus is actually one of the company's longest-lived services? The irony.

It can be a massive time sink too. Have seen the debates on there about everything (politics, finances and other random stuff) eat hours out of coworkers days.

> There's an internal google plus instance whose culture is kind of like a mix of Facebook and Twitter

So they maintain google plus code, but shut down it for general public?

They don't need to be bigger than you either. If someone just pushes you out of the way, and are really a bad actor, they could have a box cutter on them or just be more prepared to confront another person. Are you going to directly confront a person that has you surprised? No.

Sounds like they need to make reporting dead simple. Put an alarm button on every badge reader. Hit the button. Pre-recorded “intruder who did not badge present. Everyone present please wait for security.” Then locks second internal door. Or even better just automate counting bodies vs badging on every entrance/exit. Lots of nfc/face recognition type technology to tell who is who.

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