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Better Know an Office: Belo Horizonte
November 22, 2011
Introduction: We continue with our
Better Know an Office
series, inspired by Stephen Colbert’s
Better Know a District
. This recurring series will take us to different Google offices around the globe. Today, we head to Brazil in South America where we learn about our Belo Horizonte office.
Google’s Belo Horizonte is the only engineering office in Latin America. Belo Horizonte (or “Beagá” as it’s more familiarly known from the sound of its initials “BH” in Portuguese) has a population of 2.4 million and is considered to be one of the cities with the best quality of life in Latin America. The city itself was built on a hilly area and is completely surrounded by mountains. (Conference rooms in the office are each named after these mountains, including Ouro Branco, Moeda, Caparaó, and Mantiqueira.) There are waterfalls and parks minutes from downtown, such as Mangabeiras. Belo Horizonte means “beautiful horizon” and many react to seeing city postcards with “Que Belo Horizonte” or “What a beautiful horizon”.
As typical of Google offices worldwide, the Belo Horizonte office has a lively and fun environment. Googlers can play table tennis, foosball and relax in the massage room. There is also a popular video game console in the middle of the lunch area where the competition heats up daily. (It’s known that Googlers have to dodge the players to get the lunch area’s trash cans!) Googlers also participate in weekly soccer, volleyball games, climbing and running. Of course you’ll find hints of Brazilian culture throughout the office, from the interior decorating to the food. Chefs cook up
Feijoada
on Fridays and every Tuesday there is
Pão de queijo
, a local speciality.
Of course Belo Horizonte Googlers spend plenty of time on hard work. The engineering teams work on projects related to Information Retrieval, Social Networking, Ads and Geo-related technologies.
Ralf Botchen, a software engineer on the Social Networking Engineering team, spoke with us about why he enjoys working on this area. “The most interesting thing working in the social area is the fast pace in creating and developing new stuff,” he says. “At Google you can constantly learn new technologies, implement new features for the platform and see how they impact in practice, being used by millions of users worldwide.”
This year, Google Brazil won the top spot for
Great Place to Work for IT and Telecom Companies
, among 90 finalists in Brazil. These awards are a result of more than five years of effort, building a strong culture and an outstanding team in one of Google's fastest growing markets in the world. They represent external recognition for what we already know: our culture, our strength, our innovation, our Googlers.
Learn more about opportunities in Google's Belo Horizonte office
here
.
Posted by Isabela Dumont, Recruiting Specialist, Belo Horizonte
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