1st Week at Microsoft

The first week at the Microsoft Campus draws to a close. I am not at liberty to tell you about my work ( NDA and stuff ), so I will just give my impressions about the place - and also avoid having to tell my friends individually and over and over again how this place is.

Microsoft India Development Center is located in Gachibowli in Hyderabad. Nothing outstanding about this place actually. It is just space allocated for a tech park kind of place. This was a barren land, and the campus is brand new. Google Earth shows this place as nothing but stones (outdated pics) . The road has the India Business Center, the Infosys Campus, Wipro Campus and Microsoft. Big names in a small road :-)

The campus is pretty nice . Only one building has been built so far, with another one coming up. There is a cricket ground, Basket Ball court, Tennis Court, Volleyball Court, Gym ... and people do play during the day time. Its not a place where you can only go after office hours - cause there are no office hours. How this translates to the working environment is yet to be seen. Each floor has among other things pool-tables and xbox stations (yet to try those out ;-) ) , Coffee and Coke vending machines !

The one thing I really like about this place is the space. There is space in the corridors - miserly treatment to them is not there. The cubicles are big and only one person per cubicle is there. All the companies that I have worked for till now have multiple people per cubicle - with 4 persons per cube being the rule. Here - you have individual cubes. Sitting in my cube I get reminded of my onsite trips to client facilities. It feels like I am working out of San Jose instead of Gachibowli. People are really warm and helpful, though I guess that is because I have just joined and have had lesser time to mess around and make things worse ;-) .

Haven't seen much of the city yet. The roads to the HiTech City and Gachibowli are being widened and quite a lot of repair work in being undertaken. The roads are not up to the standards of the major roads in Delhi , but much better than the sad state of roads in Pune. More info about the city later.