I’m writing this from my suite at the Holiday Inn Express on El Camino in Mountain View, CA (the one at 2700, not the other one). They upgraded me to a suite, but its a smoking room. I hate smoking rooms, but its just for one night, and the windows open.

I’m visiting clients and potential clients in California, and I thought I’d see about going to Google before my meetings this afternoon. Last night I had dinner with Paul Froutan. He just took a job as the Director of Operations there, and since neither of us know the area we decided to dine at that pinnacle of haute cuisine: In and Out.

Paul used to work for Rackspace, which is one of our oldest customers. I’ve known him for 5 years now, and I, although it galls me to say this, respect his opinions on business. I’m sure he’ll do very well at his new gig.

In talking with him I got some glimpse into why Google is doing so well, and probably will continue to do so. When he showed up they asked him what kind of computer resources he needed, and from what I gather there is actually a big room with all the goodies you could want and you just pick. It reminded me of Nirvana Corp. from the Dilbert animated series.

Many years ago I wrote a document for management called “Geeks: A Guide to Care and Feeding”. Technical folks are driven by different things than “normal” people. Give them the tools to get the job done and an environment to do it in and watch great things happen. Google gets it. My old company did not.

So I’m looking forward to my trip to the Googleplex. I’ll post more about it later.