At lunch on a recent afternoon in the Hemispheres cafeteria, the two major Googler factions, engineers and sales representatives, tended to sit segregated at long tables. It was easy to tell them apart: engineers wore jeans, T-shirts and sneakers; sales representatives wore suits, no tie. There was nary a designer handbag or gray hair in the room. But you’re wrong about who the cool kids are. At last, engineers are the big men (and a few women) on campus.

“These are power geniuses,” said Jane Risen, a statuesque brunette who works in training for the sales staff and is considered among the best dressed on campus — she was wearing a brown blazer from the Gap. “If they don’t have the same social skill or style sense, they’re extremely interesting people or else they don’t get hired.”

The power geniuses are more straight-laced than some of their predecessors in Silicon Alley. During New York’s original dot-com boom, the entrepreneur Josh Harris of Pseudo.com was known for decadent parties in his loft offices that featured live sex shows. DoubleClick was the host of a legendary Willy Wonka-themed party for 2,000 with bartenders as orange Oompa Loompas.

The current Silicon Alley resurgence has brought back a bit of that tradition — the guys of CollegeHumor.com have been celebrating the largess of a multimillion-dollar investment from Barry Diller by holding dance parties at a TriBeCa loft — but the naughtiest it gets for Manhattan Googlers is custom-made trans fat-free ice-cream sandwiches.

FOOD is a major perk at the Manhattan Googleplex. Every Tuesday afternoon, tea with crumpets and scones is served. In the cafeteria a dry-erase board lists local purveyors of the ingredients in the meals like a sign at the Union Square Greenmarket. (Dry-erase boards are big in Google culture; ideas flow quickly).

All the free food has created a problem familiar to college freshmen. “Everyone gains 10 or 15 pounds when they start working here,” said James Tipon, a member of the sales team, who actively contributes to the four pounds of M&Ms consumed by New York Googlers daily. “I definitely gained that when I started working here, but I think I shed some of it,” Mr. Tipon said. “I try to be disciplined but it’s really hard.”