Downtown Portland

I've always feared downtown Portland. Ever since I could drive, the region bordered by I-405 and I-5 has been the Bermuda Triangle of my nightmares. One-way streets, frenetic bike/pedestrian traffic, erratic grid layouts, illogically placed on- and off-ramps. The stuff of legends.

Needless to say, I've avoided downtown like the plague. Until recently, that is. You see, I was offered an internship in the Pearl district, and--poor college student that I am--was loathe to turn it down.

The name of the company--Puppet Labs--was intriguing enough to override my survival instincts. I'm pleased to report that, contrary to initial expectations, the company doesn't act as a benevolent marionette master (or a malignant one, for that matter). Instead, they're a software company that develops tools used to automate server administration. But, to be frank, the most interesting thing about the company isn't the product, it's the workplace environment.

In my brief stints at other tech companies, I've been exposed to a fairly standard set of workplace guidelines.

• Dress code? Business casual.
• Pets allowed? No.
• Assigned workspace? Cubical; bench in an RF-shielded lab; trapeze over the company shark pool, etc… (just kidding)

Puppet Labs is… different.

• Dress code? Bare feet, surfer shorts, and a mohawk (with pink highlights, if you like).
• Pets allowed? The more the merrier (dogs produce such a wondrous cacophony of sound).
• Assigned workspace? Workbench, or couch, or hammock… or coffee joint down the street.

It's different, it's bizarre, but I'm liking the casual environment. It almost felt like a sin to come into work dressed in jeans and a t-shirt, but it's something I'll acclimatize to rapidly.

Another great thing about the company. Even though they're a startup, they provide their employees with drool-worthy hardware. In fact, if I have any complaint against my prior multi-national employers, it's the four-year-old laptops they outfit their employees with. You have to be a genie (and a good one at that) to be productive on 1-2GB of RAM and a 60GB hard drive. I nearly had an epileptic seizure (and I don't even have epilepsy) when my new boss handed me a 27" Apple cinema display and MacBook Pro with 8GB of RAM and a 500GB hard drive. I kept looking furtively over my shoulder, as though there were some social injustice in trusting an intern with $4000-worth of hardware.

But as I say, I'll adjust. Give me a week or two, and this won't feel wrong anymore. Well… except for the Bermuda Triangle of Portland. That one's gonna take time.

Ciao,
- Daniel