Secret Google: The funny story of how employees learn even by going to the bathroom

We Italians have our own idea of ​​the world of American startups, of Silicon Valley and of tech companies in general: we believe that those who work for these companies pass the days in beautiful places, offices full of green areas, all comforts, benefits and relaxation. And so, but it’s not just like that.

What changes, the main difference between where we work and where they work, it’s mostly in the approach: on the other side of the Atlantic there is more attention for the results than for the hours spent at the desk, for the substance more than for the form, for what is produced more than for how or where it is produced. There is a belief that a good idea can go anywhere: while playing golf, walking on a beach, lying on a sofa. Or even sitting in the toilet.

maps: from the Googleplex to Google 1212

“Learn on the cup”, or even in front

Google Headquarters is the perfect example of all of this, and during the recent one trip to California for the I/O 2023 conference we have had further confirmation. It’s actually more appropriate to talk about Google headquarters, because there isn’t one in Mountain View: there are dozens, more or less on every corner and in every street, each dedicated to something different. The main ones are the Googleplex, the historic headquarters and partially accessible to the public; Bay View, the incredible and beautiful campus that opened in 2022; and Google 1212, which is where we got to see the new Pixels up close and also try out Project Starline. And go to the bathroom, among other things.

And this is where we first stumbled upon Learning on the Looinitially without understanding what it was. Loo is a colloquial English word which more or less corresponds to something in between our cup and toilet, and Learning on the Loo is precisely this: a course that allows you to learn something while you are on the toilet. Sitting or standing, it doesn’t matter.

The lessons are posted periodically in the restrooms of Google offices around the world and they can cover everything from tips for increasing productivity to tips for using Gmail better to recommendations for avoiding bias and discrimination in decision making. The first time we saw them, we didn’t pay much attention to them: we thought they were security warnings, perhaps on what to do in the event of a fire, or lists of cleaning interventions, the ones that are also seen in Italian shopping centres. They weren’t, as we later understood and as can be seen from the two photos posted here on the page (they’re not of great quality, but they were taken while we were doing something else).

The manager is the Italian Daniele Midi

Lotl it is not a new thing, but it is something that is rarely talked about and that very few know: the idea came in 2007 and the aim was to improve the lives of employees, allowing them to learn something useful even in theoretically useless moments.

He realizes it a small editorial team led by the Italian Daniele Midi: Roman, works at Google since 2015 and was involved for the first time in the project Lotl as an intern. He was in charge of distributing the lessons in the offices, now he decides what a lesson can become: “I think people would be surprised if they knew how much attention we put into deciding if a topic is worth it to be treated,” explained Midi, who at Google deals with the development of products for the smart home.

On average, they are published 2-3 episodes of Lotl per monthon topics concerning productivity, career and personal development: the one we came across is number 334, it has a title that plays on the words flash and flush (flushing toilet, in English) and is dedicated to the use of Moma, the Google employee intranet. Which is not accessible from the outside, which we obviously tried to do.

How to create a new episode of Lotl

The main focus, when thinking about a stake of Learning on the Loois that it’s about something useful and actionable, with quick tips that the reader can easily put into practice.

All the employees can submit episode ideas, using an internal form that asks if the lesson is interesting for all venues and what the benefits would be, as well as specifying that at least one image or meme is needed. Midi and her team, made up of 3 other people, read all the proposals and decide which ones to accept, then contact the author(s) and ask them to write, staying on the space of one page: “We need above all lessons that are useful to global level- Midi explained on the official Google blog at the end of 2022 – because, for example, the needs of an office worker in the United States are different from those of an office worker in Korea”.

Once work on a new episode of Lotl concluded, the editorial team sends it to a group of volunteers around the world who take care of printing it, distributing it and placing it in the toilets (although however, the episodes are also available online and by email). From the proposal phase to the actual publication it can take up to 3-4 weeks.

Like so much of the work, even the one on Lotl has changed in biennium of the pandemic: when people started staying at home in 2020, the address book became entirely digital and the content changed, with proposals more dedicated to smart working, setting up a home workspace, as well as the management of stress caused by infections, lockdowns and quarantines. Midi said that “it was certainly a difficult period, but it was really wonderful to see how many colleagues wanted to share ideas to help us and help each other”.

twitter: another example of Testing on the Toilet

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The cue from Testing on the Toilet

Learning on the toilet it’s an original project but it’s not the first of its kind at Google: it’s inspired by another very similar one, which is called Testing on the toiletis much older (the episode we read is 667) and in 2006 the Washington Post also wrote about it.

Legend has it that Tot was born when a group of programmers of Big G thought of exchanging notes and notes to carry out better tests to test the code they were writing: from there to leaving those same notes, more refined, printed and framed, in the office bathrooms, the step was evidently short .

Today again, Tot is focused above all on this and more generally on how to write better code and basically on how to program better and according to his manager, who is called Andrew Trenk, one of the reasons why it works is that you have to “fit everything on one page”, which makes “the content really useful”, because “authors are forced to limit themselves to essential information only”. And therefore more effective.

Which is a speech that definitely also applies to Learning on the toilet and in general a little for everything that is written, as recalled by the famous (and definitely fitting) joke by Jeff Goldblum in the Great Cold: “You can’t write anything longer than it takes your average person to take an average crap”.

opening image from echo-point.com

@capoema