I recently went  to San Francisco for a week. I stayed with family in San Jose. One of my family members works for Apple. He took me on a tour of some of the larger companies between San Fran and San Jose.  Apple, Google, Facebook and Yahoo. This was pretty cool. I have a technical background, so to me this was interesting. I would skip it if you are short on time, but if you have a few days definitely interesting to do. I also received a tour of inside Apple, but not allowed to take photos so don’t have any.

I used to work for Microsoft in Seattle, and the buildings of the other large tech giants look similar.  Maybe the culture is different. All these companies have bicycles for people to travel between buildings, and have them painted in their company colors. These bikes are in front of buildings and not locked, which I thought was very interesting.

Another interesting observation. The main building of Facebook is an old Sun Micro system building. A form of disruptive innovation ? Fall and Rise of Giants ? Some thoughts that went thorough my head as I posed for a photo in front of the Facebook sign.

Here are some photos from my tour.