Today was my first day at Google, and a full day too. Orientation started at 8am, and I just got home (it's a little past 8pm) because after orientation, I was in a couple of video conferences with a team in Japan.

I've joined what's called the Japanese Product Focus Team, which is a group of engineers based in Mountain View who work on various products to add features or address issues specific to the Japanese market (as the name would imply). My first specific task relates to geo/maps/search, and sounds quite challenging (ok, very challenging), but also has a pretty significant impact, so I'm pretty excited.

I can't say much after just a day, but it's very clear to me that Google is a very different company to the last one I worked for, and mostly in good ways. Suffice to say that I actually came out more excited to be there than when I walked in.