Tech companies exported their culture of work-as-fun to outside firms

Evidence

Google, meanwhile, redefined corporate culture with its T-shirt-clad workforce, free meals, and whimsical campuses. “Google is not a conventional company,” founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin wrote. “We do not intend to become one.” They chose Eric Schmidt as their first grown-up CEO because he was the only candidate who had been to Burning Man. Zuckerberg borrowed heavily from Google’s unofficial playbook for how to run Facebook, commissioning artist David Choe to spruce up its office walls with a graffiti-inspired mural. (The stock Choe took as payment later ballooned to $200 million.) This vision of work as fun was so compelling that dying companies hired Google executives to spearhead revivals. — W. David Marx, Blank Space, 277

Categorization

• CANDY: The Eric Schmidt Burning Man qualification detail is a fun, tweetable bit.
• XREF: connects to: Work and amusement have converged in structure while growing more strictly separated