There are thousands of people that work for Google around the globe, but if you're one of the privileged few that gets to work out of their corporate headquarters in Mountain View California, there's another reason to be counting your lucky stars. In addition to free healthy meals for its staff, ping pong and a variety of other amazing perks, Google has just added Brazilian jiu-jitsu lessons to their ever growing list of activities.
Fightland reports that Google's BJJ classes are taught by Milton Bastos, a multi-decorated black belt who hails from Sao Paolo, Brazil. Bastos got the job by replying to a social media post (Facebook). He says that there is no surprise in this move by Google, as the Northern California area is overflowing with martial arts enthusiasts.
It is common. Especially here in Northern California, everybody's from a tech company. Most of the people, they work in some tech place like Apple, Google, Facebook, YouTube.
The folks involved in his classes aren't complete amateurs, either. He says there are practitioners ranging from beginner to black belt.
They have black belts, brown belts, purple belts, all ranks over there. And beginners, too.
Milton's first class went so well that the second one was filled to maximum capacity just two days later. There is also a little friendly competition emerging as Bastos says there could be in-house tournaments in the future, as well as some social media face-offs.
Actually, there is a plan to do something like that. They say Facebook has a team, too, and the guys who train there, they've competed before. So they're probably going to want us to do something like that. Maybe like a Google against Facebook.
If you're a computer genius and live in the Nor-Cal area, Google seems to offer a very tempting set of fringe benefits for its employees.