Thursday, March 17, 2005

Go West!

'tis time. This long hiatus is attributed to my trip out west (north-west, actually) to the famed land of Redmond, WA where the world's largest software company resides. An interesting time - a few observations:

Washington state is beautiful. Forget the rain, and the general cloudy-gloominess that seems to infest the air. The mountains that graze the skyline and the evergreens lend the area a character that is entirely its own.

Microsoft is big. Quite like a Tata Steel would have defined the ecosystem of a place like Tatanagar in Jamshedpur, the company defines an ecosystem for the area it surrounds, albeit on a smaller scale.

The company knows its employees are important and takes care of them. It is easy to see that geeks started the company and run it to the greatest extent. The only suits who are part of it are those who talk to the clients.

It is a company I've always grudgingly respected. The 'respected' part got a big fillip after meeting people there. Smart and committed. Willing to accept that they need to work harder to put out better products.

This is possibly the last I'll be talking about that on this blog. No work chatter here.

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