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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I can't believe that no one has recommended they rename their campus to Microsoft Bob. How is this not a poll option?
Personally, I'd like to go to their campus to grab a pastrami sandwich at the Control-Alt-Deli and then catch a show at the Blue Screen theater. Afterward I could down a few brews at the Ribbon Bar where things only start to make sense under the influence of copious amounts of alcohol.
...And then wake up from the nightmare that is Microsoft and go ~.
Move all of the buildings around and cover them up with big, colourful rectangles so that no one can find anything.
Since just knowing where things are is the old way of doing things, microphones and speakers will be placed everywhere. To find a place one simply asks. The speakers will respond with a friendly AI assistant who will direct you to specific products for purchase based on that confidential conversation you had with your lawyer the other day.
That brings us to surveillance. Surveillance, surveillance, surveillance. There should be no place that is not covered by video cameras. For example, bathroom stalls shall have at least 6 cameras, one for each wall, one on the ceiling, and the "bottoms up" view.
With the new total surveillance system comes targeted advertising. Going back to our bathroom stall example, a large and colourful screen would be placed on the door to show targeted ads. One such ad could consist of our beloved character "Clippy" exclaiming "It looks like you are dealing with prostate cancer..."
There are two baseball - well, probably softball - infields with no outfield to speak of, unless you count the tennis courts across the path from the right hand infield. So keep that ball down, guys.
The "brown" cricket track is probably an all-weather surface of some kind. That's pretty common for dedicated cricket grounds here in the USA. We have one locally that was mandated by the person who donated the parkland to the city. Apparently he/she loved cricket. It's a big area with baseball diamonds at the corners and the cricket track in the middle. Well, the local West Indian population loves it.
Mine's a Red Stripe, mon.
If you think that Windows 8 was where Microsoft went wrong with Windows, might I point out the definitive failures Windows Vista and Windows ME?
It's been a fairly standard practice that every other version of Windows should be avoided. The jury is out on how to count 95 vs 95a vs 95b, 98 vs 98SE, and 8 vs 8.1 and how Service Packs should be counted. The jury is also still out on whether 10 fits the rule or not. (And this is only counting the desktop consumer line.)
Long story short is that approximately half of Microsoft's releases of Windows are so ridden with bugs that you almost forget about all of the features cut from the releases and leave you waiting for the next Windows version to replace it with something that actually works. So really, MS is still pretty much par for their course.
"spend the US$150m on building a new more modern OS instead. Apple did it."
My idea of "more modern" is not password free authentication as root....
Windows 10 works just fine and is relatively fast, secure and stable. If you don't like the default interface then there are others to chose from that also work just fine.
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