Alwayz Learning: A walk in Silicon Valley, California

Few years back (in 2011) I got the chance to visit The silicon valley, CA. For me an IT professional it was like a dream come true. For me it was like "chaar dhaam ki yatra" (visiting famous temples). I wanted to see all the famous companies and how their offices look like. So one fine day me and my friends took our car and visited these famous places. (source taken for this post is from Wikipedia)

FACEBOOK

First we went to facebook and this is what their sign board looks like

We were lucky enough to enter their reception area where we saw this board signed by, I guess, fans.

Some quick facts about facebook:

The website's primary color is blue as Zuckerberg is red-green colorblind; he explained in 2010: "blue is the richest color for me—I can see all of blue"
Facebook is built in PHP which is compiled with HipHop for PHP, a 'source code transformer' built by Facebook engineers that turns PHP into C++. The deployment of HipHop reportedly reduced average CPU consumption on Facebook servers by 50%.
On July 29, 2011, Facebook announced its Bug Bounty Program in which security researchers will be paid a minimum of $500 for reporting security holes on Facebook website.
India, which has the second largest number of bug hunters in the world, tops the Facebook Bug Bounty Program with the largest number of valid bugs.
About Dislike button - Zuckerberg explained in a Q&A session on December 11, 2014, that his reticence was due to a concern about a tone of negativity on the platform—whereby users could "shame" others—and he offered the comment option for situations where people were unwilling to use the like function. However, he said, "We're [Facebook] thinking about it [dislike button] ... It's an interesting question," and said that he likes the idea of Facebook users being able to express a greater variety of emotions. So who knows it might come soon.

Going towards other famous companies

YAHOO

Yahoo! we reached yahoo's headquarters at 701 First Ave, Sunnyvale. Did you know the word "yahoo" is a backronym for "Yet Another Hierarchical Officious Oracle".

One of the buildings in Yahoo compound.

MICROSOFT

Well this one is my favourite. I am a big Microsoft fan (although I dont like acting crazy about it).

Some quick facts:

Microsoft was found in 1975 (40 years back) by Bill Gates and Paul Allen
Number of employees: 128,076 (June 2014)
Microsoft Logo - Did you notice the slash between s and o? As per Scott baker, designer of the logo "The new logo, in Helvetica italic typeface, has a slash between the o and s to emphasize the "soft" part of the name and convey motion and speed."

My friend posing next to Microsoft's signboard

New Microsoft logo since 2012

GOOGLE

Some quick facts:

Founded in 1996 by Larry Page and Sergey Brin
The company has around 1 million servers in data centers around the world (as per reports of 2007);and processes over 1 billion searches
Wont say more, just see the famous google campus below in pics

APPLE

Some facts about Apple:

It is worlds second largest information technology company after Samsung electronics
It is worlds largest publicly traded organisation
No of employees - 72,800 As of 2014
We all know that Steve jobs gave the name "Apple" but what inspired him is his visit to Apple farm while on a fruitarian diet. The bite was added to the logo to differentiate it from cheery.

Apple Inc.'s world corporate headquarters are located in the middle of Silicon Valley, at 1–6 Infinite Loop, Cupertino, California.

STANFORD UNIVERSITY

The beautiful valley does not only hold corporate offices of famous IT companies but also the well known Stanford University. Its campus area is 8,180 contiguous acres, has 700 major buildings and 96% of undergraduates live on campus. Isn't it amazing. It is also famous for its entrepreneurial character.

Going towards Stanford university