Life at Bio-Rad

Video: Bio-Rad Employees Hold Ping Pong Tournament

November 14, 2023

Video: 2023 Ping Pong Tournament, Singles Final 

Some may take a walk when they need a break; others might meditate or chat with their coworkers. Then there are those who pick up a ping pong paddle and whack a tiny ball around.  

There are a lot of those types at Bio-Rad, as evidenced by the ping pong tables at some of our locations in Northern California. At Bio-Rad's corporate headquarters in Hercules, California, there are even enough ping pong players to hold the occasional ping pong tournament.  

“Before COVID, every single year there used to be a ping pong tournament hosted by our Life Science Group (LSG) team,” says Brian Nguyen, a LSG software quality assurance engineer. “I’m fairly new, but my team lead is a big fan of ping pong, so he would plan it every single year and so I volunteered to help out this year.”

Brian says finding players for the tournament wasn’t too difficult because there is already a team chat for employees who meet to play during work breaks. “I think the biggest challenge was finding the balance between having someone like me, who doesn’t play a lot, and others who are like semi-pro players,” Brian says. “So what we did is we tried to make the singles games ultra competitive, but then in the doubles it was kind of like a ‘Round Robin’ where you get paired with someone of a different skill level to make it fair.”

The result was a fun, competitive singles and doubles tournament held between September and October of this year (some footage from the Singles Final is shown in the video at top). Congrats to Xiangdong Meng on the win!  

Brian says LSG may challenge the Digital Biology Group in Pleasanton, California to a tournament in the future, too. “I don't think the word got out to Pleasanton this year, but I know they have an outdoor ping pong table and we have an indoor one....so that could be fun.” 

Looking for a company that makes time for a little fun? View our open roles!