Job efficiency at Google

USA is an amazing country. Here’s a shot from the photo essay from Time Magazine.

So one lifeguard to watch one person? That’s highly efficient. When I saw this picture, I thought of India and Latin America. Unemployment is a problem there so when you board, say, a bus, you often face three persons — one is collecting your cash to buy a ticket, the second is handing you a ticket, and the third one validates it. And everyone is happy.

When I was in a hotel a few months ago, it had a pretty big pool — say 20x7 meters or something. And it was pretty deep — say 1.65m in one end and about 2.5 in the other. And there were no swimlanes. And THERE WAS NO LIFEGUARD so you were completely on your own there. If you went alone swimming and something bad happened, you could have easily drowned with no one noticing until too late. (I’m not sure if there were any CCTV cameras and where would they have been hooked up to… even if there was one displaying stuff to the lady in reception, I’m not sure what she would have done if she saw someone in distress.)

I’m sure there’s a good reason for Google to have that lifeguard there. Probably some safety regulations that say “if you have a pool operated by a commercial entity, it must have a lifeguard” or something. But it just looks silly to me.