Shanghai Tech WriterTechnical Writing, Technology, Web2.0, Google, Shanghai, China

One really cool thing about working at Google is the amount of collaboration that takes place between different offices. I can’t speak for all the products and services, but the product I work with has people in several offices. There’s a lot of collaboration between the development team, global services, customer support, marketing, legal, etc…  In addition, I’m the only technical writer in Shanghai, so I’m also collaborating with other writers that are mainly in the U.S.

All the Google offices and conference rooms have really cool technology to facilitate collaboration across the globe. Most conference rooms have either two projectors or two large screen TVs. When we have meetings, which is quite often, everyone dials in and we’re all connected as if we’re in the same room. One screen shows all the locations/people represented and the other screen shows a computer screen, if a computer is hooked up. It’s quite common to have several cities represented at every meeting — Shanghai, Beijing, Mountain View, San Francisco, New York, Chicago, etc… That also means we have meetings at odd hours, like early mornings and late evenings. I’ve had meetings as early as 7am (!!!) and as late as 8pm. Thankfully, we always have the option of dialing in from home since our laptops come with a built-in webcam.

I think it’s really cool to see how a product comes together despite the product team being strategically scattered across so many places. There are challenges of course, but thanks to amazing technology that makes collaboration across the globe possible! Can you imagine the days before video conferencing and emails, not to mention the use of the Internet as a collaboration tool??