Intern for a Day, Vol. 1: Harmonix Music Systems
"Can I get you a refill for your Goblet of Rock, Ms. McWilliams?"
8/8/2008 6:32 PM | 8 Comments | Page 2 of 7
Scott Jones
Status: Coffee makes me feel 4-percent sexier.
The front desk: If you want to rock, you must first appease the front-desk troll. He enjoys cough drops and old eight-tracks of Johnny Cash.
10:20 a.m. Helen leads me to my "desk," which is really just a cluttered little area next to her desk. I ask her what some of my tasks will be for the day. "You have to give me piggyback rides and go downstairs and buy me candy whenever I tell you to," she says. I can't tell if she's joking or not. "But you can start off by restringing that guitar for me."
She points at a nearby electric guitar.
I tell her that I don't know how to restring a guitar. She seems disappointed, and makes a little mark on a piece of paper. "Well, do you know how to fix a car?" Again, I say no. She makes another little mark.
"This isn't going very well so far, is it?" she says.
10:21 a.m. I ask if Alex [Rigopulos] is around, hoping he might have some kinder/gentler tasks for me. "I haven't seen Alex so far today," Helen says. "But he might be around somewhere." Helen takes me on a tour of the office.
10:32 a.m. The office is absolutely massive. It sprawls, and then sprawls some more. When you think you've reached what has to be the end of it, suddenly a small set of stairs appears, and a new level of offices opens before you.
This is pretty much what 90 percent of the office actually looks like.
The office was formerly occupied by some distant branch of Harvard. The carpeting is industrial gray. The walls are a businesslike white. Some of the offices still bear the tiny nameplates of former Harvard employees (complete with the Harvard insignia). I'm not sure what I expected -- disco ball? a 24/7 open bar? an on-site tattoo artist? -- but there's no other way to put this: The Harmonix offices, considering what they do there, are shockingly banal.
10:40 a.m. "We moved into this place not too long ago," Helen says, explaining the banality. The company's old office, which Harmonix still uses, is across the street. They've had plans to redecorate the new place, but pulling together Rock Band 2 with only a six-month development window apparently got in the way of their redecorating plans. The place is functional. It's serviceable. But that's about all it is, really.
10:49 a.m. The nerve center of the office is a cafeteria-like lunch room where company-wide meetings -- called "Weelies" -- are held on Friday afternoons. Each purple chair in the lunch room represents an employee. I ask if when someone is fired, they're told to take their purple chair and leave. Helen laughs. "No," she says. She's quiet for a moment. "But that's actually not a bad idea."
Weelies, I'm told, have been a part of the company since the very beginning. (Note: Throughout the day, I hear employees say to one another, "Hey, were you at the Weely on Friday?" or "Did you hear what happened at last week's Weely?" or "It seems like we have one really good Weely and then two lame Weelies after that. Which means we currently have a one-to-two good-Weely-to-lame-Weely ratio.")
