Silicon Alley Insider estimates that Google spends $73 million a year feeding its U.S. workers. The figure is probably low, since many employees invite their families over for free meals. [SAI]

An anonymous software engineer who says he used to work on AdWords, Google's lucrative if straightforward ad-selling system, has written a blog post explaining why he's leaving the search giant. Unfortunately, his tenure at Google did not include a tutorial on the use of the "Return" key, and most of his post is one long paragraph reaching 1,422 words. Here's the 100-word version on why he split for a social-networking startup.

If time flies when you're having fun, the inverse is true as well. Ex-Googler Sheryl Sandberg joined Facebook as COO only two weeks ago and "It feels like she's been here six months already," one Facebook exec told the Wall Street Journal. Sandberg has introduced employee performance reviews, new recruitment procedures, and management-training programs. Suddenly, the place sounds a lot less fun for its 550 employees than it did when Lesley Stahl from 60 Minutes visited Mark Zuckerberg at the offices last fall. It may be good news for Facebook's investors, though.

A select few of the 300 DoubleClick employees Google laid off yesterday will be placed into "transitional roles" and offered contract positions, reports the WSJ. That's not much of a reprieve. Google HR makes contractors sign agreements to abide by strict rules. They're not allowed to " use massage chairs, videogames, pool tables, foosball tables or other entertainment facilities on Google's campus," according to one such agreement leaked to us. Probably won't get to eat the food, either. Read the whole thing below:

An Intuit tipster tells us that management gathered up the peons for a "a rah rah speech about making us the most admired company that everyone wants to work for," yesterday. Then they unveiled the new logo, pictured. "Needless to say no one in the Valley seemed to pay attention." Sure, we're watching Intuit! Just the other day we reported that instead of keeping cash or investing in a more liquid instrument, Intuit owns about $328 million in auction-rate securities — you know, the kind no one's willing to buy.

We've been hearing that impending layoffs have DoubleClick employees fearing for their jobs after Google finishes its takeover. Why? Working there sucks. Ask any Googler. Below, four reasons why DoubleClickers should welcome their liberation from the Googleplex:

DoubleClick employees may technically work for Google now, but an ad in the DoubleClick Facebook network indicates that they're not real Googlers yet. "Hi DoubleClick!," the ad copy reads. "Please stop gorging on all our food. Maybe we won't fire you. Thanks!" The banner ad is below.

In this interview with The Deal's Mary Kathleen Flynn, Jason Calacanis recounts how he got in a little hot water with his advice for startups when he urged founders to "fire people who are not workaholics" and tell them to "go work at the post office or Starbucks if you want balance in your life." Calacans explains that he didn't mean what he said the way it sounded. And then, elaborating, he explains that, well, yes, he actually did.

Google's Zurich office may look like a playhouse, but it certainly has its rules and regulations. "The only thing you're not allowed to do on a flypole is carry your laptop with you," our narrator tells a BBC crew on a tour of the place. "Coffee, food is absolutely fine."

During this interview with Fortune, FriendFeed cofounder Bret Taylor explains why he and three other ex-Googlers happily left Google's organic, locally sourced swaddling for an uncertain future at a startup:

Click to viewWe've run images from Google's Zurich office before. They did not do the place justice. We didn't include the bathtubs. Thumbnails from Google's official Picasa gallery, below.

Commenter jordanly has harsh words about Google's hiring practices:

Frustrated Googlers have at least one new hire at Facebook worried.

Coddled by close-hovering helicopter parents, Generation Y (of which I'm a proud member) is incapable of taking initiative. (This very post was "suggested" by Owen Thomas, yet I get to take all the credit.) We never had to struggle up multiple hills, in the snow, to get to school, so we lack any true sense of accomplishment. To help managers deal with our overweening self-importance, BusinessWeek has come up with a bullet-pointed Generation Y workplace survival guide. No, it doesn't include anything helpful, like how to use Facebook or Twitter as management tools. It does suggest exactly the kind of boss behavior Gen Y will see right through, once we learn to recognize it. So how do you know if your boss is trying to game you into productivity? Here are the signs:

Blogoscoped's Phillip Lenssen reports that Google's hiring policies — and Shona Brown, Google's senior vice president for business operations — get a breathless thumbs-up in The No Asshole Rule: Building a Civilized Workplace and Surviving One That Isn't by Robert I. Sutton, PhD. Here's how Brown and Google (allegedly) keep the asshole count so low at Google. (Ironic, since Brown is among the most despised executives at Google, a fact Sutton doesn't mention.)

Commenter ABMW writes:

"I knew it was time to go when they asked me to cover my tattoos." — Yahoo employee No. 431, who might be able to come back postmerger and work for Microsoft's transgendered general manager.

Remember Charlie Ayers, Google's first executive chef, who retired in 2005 after making millions of dollars on the Google IPO? All those cooks who passed on that job now have a second chance, according to Inside Facebook. After years of catering takeout lunches, the social network is hiring its own chef. With Facebook poaching so many Google employees who are used to chef-cooked meals, it's no surprise that they'd hire someone who knows how to poach eggs. But check out this curious line in the job description: "Be accountable for the financial aspects of the F&B department ensuring a profitable operation." Is penny-pinching CFO Gideon Yu insisting that employees pay for their meals? The full job description:

Hitler raus, Google has declared. A mention of the joys of learning about the late German dictator at work, spotted by Valleywag on Wednesday, has disappeared from Google India's job-recruiting page. After the jump, a screenshot of the formerly offending passage.

There must be something in the air — perhaps all this Yuletide spirit — that unearths fresh adoration of little baby Hitler. Will Smith had a run-in with the Jewish Defense League over his comments about Hitler's basic goodness. That in turn raised the Internet's Führer radar, uncovering one of the overlooked perks of working for Google: unlimited Hitler talk!