Image by ? Lee J Haywood via Flickr
From inventing personal card-readers that let you set up a small business anywhere to mapping our genetic makeup, tech companies do a lot of cool stuff for us. But what they do behind the scenes can be just as interesting.
Huffingtonpost went to question-and-answer website Quora in search of the most out-there ways that tech companies name things at their headquarters. While some of the inter-office nomenclature makes logical sense (Twitter’s conference rooms are named after birds), others, well, don’t.
Check list below to find out what Quora users revealed from behind the scenes at the world’s most innovative tech companies.
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Facebook - What is a condiment video game you ask? According to Quora user Ami Vora, it was Facebook’s way of solving a raging intra-company battle over whether the conference rooms should be named after condiments or video games. Vora writes,
Finally, exasperated, someone suggested just crossing the two, video games and condiments. This was put to a vote, and of course immediately won. I was dubious at first, until i saw the name suggestions.
Some of her favorites included: Half and Half Life, Guitartar Hero, Super Mayo Brothers, Oregano Trail, NBA Jam, and Duck Hunt’s
- Twitter - Not surprisingly Twitter’s conference rooms are all named after birds. There’s Magpie, Thrasher, Nighthawk and Raven. However, according to Twitter engineer Ben Cherry, a few names didn’t make the cut. Among the rejects were Booby, a long-winged seabird, and Tit, a small perching bird.
- Mozilla - According to Abhinav Sharma, the conference rooms at Mozilla are named alphabetically, with each letter standing for an internet meme. Some favorites are, Numa Numa, Icanhascheeseburger, O’RLY?and All Your Base.
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23andMe - 23andMe, a personal genomics and biotechnology company, named their servers and major releases after references to the TV show “Arrested Development.” Alex Khomenko, an engineer at the company wrote the following on Quora: “The main development server was christened Gob. The first release was called ‘Annyong’ and it went alphabetically from there.”
Other releases were named, Cornballer, Gobias and Nevernude
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Square - Square, a company that makes portable card readers for small businesses, fittingly named their conference rooms after, what else, famous squares around the world. Quora user Aimal Mehrabi writes that the conference rooms are alphabetical from the front of the office to the back and include Red Square, Tahrir Square, Heroes’ Square, Old Market Square, and many other squares.
Nineteen squares are listed on Quora, which makes you wonder how many conference rooms a start-up should really have. Of course, this isn’t any old start-up. It’s Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey’s, and it’s said to be growing like a weed.
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