Microsoft to rebuild Redmond campus, including cricket pitch Apple built a spaceship, Amazon's tendered for a town and now Microsoft's announced a “multi-year campus refresh project” that will see it splash US$150m to renovate 6.7 million square feet of its offices, add eight new buildings and lay a cricket pitch. The money will be poured into the company's Redmond campus, which will …
"I hope it isn't a CEO vanity project, that would be really sad."
Most likely it IS.
I think that they should be hiring TEST ENGINEERS instead, to deal with NOT having the end-users as their beta testers.
And now, MY top 10 list of new names for the 'Redmond Campus':
10. Nutsy-Cuckoo-land
9. 'Hallowed Halls of Redmond' (I use that a lot anyway)
8. Spyware Heights
7. "The Store"
6. Adware Haven
5. Flatso Metro
4. BSOD
3. Lost Wages (due to various forms of outsourcing and hiring n00bs)
2. Snarf-ville
and the number 1 new name for the Redmond Campus is...
"You can't pronounce it, because it's that stupid sideways ASCII-smiley emoticon you often see emblazened in the middle of your flat-looking screen"
According to the India Times, 34% of Microsoft's employees are Indian.
Including by heritage the cricket-obsessed CEO, of course. But why don't Microsoft stop dicking around, and move the company HQ to Bangalore? Lower land costs, lower construction costs for the new mothership building, no more visa problems, as much cricket as they can get, low cost employees as far as the eye can see. Hell, even Indian director salaries are cheaper....oh. hold on, maybe Nutella isn't going to want that bit.
Does anybody know of any instance where offshoring development / services to India has gone well? Defined as service levels maintained and costs havent spiralled? Sure costs are superficially reduced to briefly, but staff-turnover and lack of investment in skills and kit always have the same (bad) result...
I hope it isn't a CEO vanity project, that would be really sad.
In the grand scheme of CEO vanity stuff this would be fairly small though. A few stumps and a 'slightly differently mown rectangle' can't cost that much?
Oh, I suppose you'd need an AUTOEXEC.BAT to hit the ball with too.
<Applauds politely for no obvious reason>
Depressingly, history has proven MSFT prescient in that respect. Every second website I visit these days seems to have some annoying chatbot popping up in the bottom right corner, obscuring content and generally getting in the way. I would suggest "Bobville" or "Roverland", but with the current fetish for AI and AR, they're probably going to prove similarly far-sighted.
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'cause of all the t*ts running around....*
* idiot 't*ts', not anything about totally IT capable persons of the female gender, whom I respect, yada yada....all persons in this non-image are over eighteen, cross fingers, sign of the cross, lucky clover, don't mention the scottish play etc.
"When your CEO is obsessed with silly things, and enforce them upon the company with company money, it's tome to show him or her the door..."
It probably happened to MS a long time ago, but when management starts planning a shiny new HQ, they start concentrating on getting the best offices instead of doing the job they are paid to do.
In the offseason, it can be used for Australian rules football - which makes American rules football look entirely sane..
And besides, being british, I think a cricket pitch is always a good idea, and I'm vaguely pleased with the idea that the open spaces on the campus are as important as the buildings.
And there isn't a UFO in sight/on site.
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