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Closing Time At Microsoft's Campus Pub
theodp writes "Just three days before the Spitfire pub was to open on Microsoft's Entertainment & Devices Division campus, TechFlash reports that Microsoft got cold feet and pulled the plug on the project, leaving the bar's owner and his 22 employees in the lurch. 'I am completely stunned and disappointed by the decision,' said now lease-less owner Jonathan Sposato, who's stuck with space built out as a pub, complete with a giant bar, a fireplace, and eight beer taps. (He says it wouldn't be economically viable to refit it as a restaurant.) Microsoft spokesman Lou Gellos confirmed the company's sudden change of heart: 'The goal was always to create a cool gathering place for employees, but to do so in a manner that's consistent with a business environment. We decided we should do something more appropriate, and that meant not having a pub.' The new pub had been in development for more than a year."
"The goal was always to create a cool gathering place for employees..." Where? The state unemployment office?
Some of these people "...left other jobs to work in the pub" That was a really sleazy move by MS.
I'm taking bets that this contract dosn't put the cost of this "change of heart", where it rightfuly belongs.
Hurray for the MS Legal teem, once again ensuring that Microsoft can screw it's business partners with impunity.
--= Isn't it surprising how badly I spell ?
The unspoken reality at Microsoft is that there is a large minority of Mormons working in and around Microsoft. While something like caffeinated drinks can be overlooked, something as potent and mind-altering as alcohol is a spit in the face of the Mormon employees.
There is no doubt that some pressure was brought to bear against management when this pub was announced, and though it hasn't been publicized, the Washington state Mormon leaders have been visiting the campus to lobby against the pub.
It sucks for the people who own and work at the pub, but in a silently ultra-religious state like WA, it's no surprise that on of the largest local employers bows to the commands of the puppet masters.
I see nothing wrong with employees being able to hang out after hours and maybe even some informal brainstorming could take place. Way to not think differently MSFT. How very boring and corporate America of you.
Jesus was a compassionate social conservative who called individuals to sin no more.
It seemed like a good idea until they read the last two panels.
My thoughts exactly. Just another form of expression of a basic truth. The fact that a key investor was a former Microsofter only makes this a little sweeter. Consider the words of the great philosophers Mr. T and Nelson.
I'm an American. I love this country and the freedoms that we used to have.
Thanks, Mormons.
No, not really.
Not flamebait either - local Mormon leaders have been quite vigorously, though quietly, campaigning against the pub, and, apparantly, successfully. Assholes.
I'm all for putting a pub in anywhere, including an existing pub (imagine an infinite series of pubs...). That said, does Google have any pubs on their campuses? Honest question, really.
512 MB RAM, 20 GB disk, 200 GB transfer, five datacenters. $19.95/month.
Boy if this isn't Office Space and every boneheaded corporate move ever in a nutshell. Hey let's do something nice for out employees, they're adults who will enjoy this and can have a beer without getting completely drunk and making asses of themselves at work (or we'll fire them, that's fair). Then a lawyer takes a look at it, says you know this looks like it might be fun and actionable, and god knows we don't have any money - better cancel it.
So you end up five times worse than never even having planned it in the first place, because you got everyone's hopes up and now you look like stupid jackasses. But your asses are covered, so all is right with the world! And this is why we pay all you stupid CEOs and MBAs the big bucks, to be dithering asswipes who lead by windsock.
If the bar fails for any reason, including Microsoft killing it, Microsoft gets all their intellectual property. A deal's a deal.
Just like Sendo on phones.
One wonders if after all these years and this many examples: if the lawyers of Microsoft's potential partners aren't carefully reading the contracts and advising their clients with due diligence, what's in that failure for those lawyers? It could not be possible that Microsoft subverts the legal counsel of their abuse targets first, could it? That would be unethical and unfair. Oh, wait...
Justification for a pub: Google doesn't have one.
Justification for pulling the plug on the pub: Google doesn't have one.
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
They just need to send management to the pub... let them occupy their time with darts and vomit while the engineers work on fixing their operating system.
One of the nastiest bits of code that I wrote after a four rather strong beer lunch. It was in the early days of graphics when we had a DEC VT11, vector graphic display where we had to draw the screen within the phosphor decay time so it didn't flicker. Typically you would have a sequence of instructions for the graphic controller and then you interrupted the CPU which would do cleverer things. The problem was that every cycle spend in the interrupt code, the phosphor was decaying and it limited the number of things we could draw as the CPU was involved every time we drew a new component on the screen.
In the pub, I just thought "Sod it" and shaved a few cycles by having self modifying code. Ugly as hell and hard to maintain but it meant we could display more on the screen.
See my journal, I write things there
What about the Progress Bar?
See my journal, I write things there
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Time was when England exiled their most violent felons to an island continent penal colony half a world away. Over time the definition for "violent felon" slid from rapist and murderer to pirate, then to treasonous conspirator, and so on until they landed at political dissident. For many years they exported these folk, only to discover later that this was their best and brightest; their free thinkers, their engineers artists and inventors, the folk who were brighter than their superiors. And what were left were Lords and serfs.
So now Australia breeds a more vital breed of men, having been selected from that filter, and England has lost control of them.
Such is as it is with Microsoft. Microsoft has bought into the theory that the top 20% of workers contribute 80% of the work that they've lost sight of how fungible those metrics are. Their 20%ers are folk who threaten the established structure, who are smarter than their bosses, who have scary ideas. It's only right that they migrate from there to Google. Google is Microsoft's Australia.
And no, I've never worked for Microsoft or Google and I still don't and I doubt that I would barring dire circumstance or rude incentive.
Help stamp out iliturcy.
The unspoken reality at Microsoft is that there is a large minority of Mormons working in and around Microsoft. While something like caffeinated drinks can be overlooked, something as potent and mind-altering as alcohol is a spit in the face of the Mormon employees.
Wait, what are you smoking? There aren't that many Mormons in the Seattle or east side area on the whole, and nobody cares what they think about drinking. When I worked at MS, the Muslims had a more visible presence (they had a prayer room), and nobody cared about offending them when the Friday beer parties rolled around.
but in a silently ultra-religious state like WA
Again, Huh? For the most part, Washington pretty liberal in religious terms, but the few religious conservatives we have are not silent. Just ask MS about their good friend Rev Hutcherson and his famous anti-gay MS boycots.
I find it rather hard to believe that MS would cave to any religious group after the local PR fiasco that resulted in the whole Hutcherson affair.
HA! I just wasted some of your bandwidth with a frivolous sig!
It's way more likely that the decision to can the bar came from the attempt to get public bail out money to build a bridge connecting two campuses that has a highway dividing them.
MS is already being criticized for not needing the funding because they make more then enough to build it themselves, now think about the public backlash if Obama or whoever does reward MS and they announce the opening of their on campus bar. It would be like what we have already seen with businesses having meeting at high dollar vacation resorts or flying private jets to Washington to beg for money and so on.
In the state of Washington, you need permits and licenses to sell alcohol. If the mormons or any religious organization was apposed to the pub, we would have known when they objected to the purchasing of the permits and licenses. The GP is just expressing fear of religion or a disdain for a certain brand of religion. I noticed where he believes what someone else told him without questioning it so he may be the victim of someone else in that boat.
You are completely missing the point. According to the story, they contracted with someone to do a lot of work and waited until he was almost finished to tell him they didn't want what he did. No contract terms can change the fact of that being abusive.
Before software was Microsoft's method of delivering evil (in my opinion). Now Microsoft top managers are apparently investigating other delivery methods.
Every time you wanted a drink, or a pretzel, or a peanut, or to use the bathroom did you have to pass an annoying Windows Genuine Advantage check?
...time and time again I have heard how various people and businesses who have "partnered up" with Microsoft for various projects were screwed by Microsoft in various ways. I recall things like a phone maker who developed some stuff for Microsoft and then Microsoft caused and created some condition where the phone maker was in breach of contract and then Microsoft claimed all the IP for themselves leaving this other company out to dry. There are lots of other stories where Microsoft screwed people and businesses on deals as well. The lesson that nobody ever learns is NOT to trust Microsoft.
But usually, you hear about Microsoft deals going bust harming other tech businesses... not things like this! But it is still more of the same. Someone changes their mind and "poof!" it's all gone.
If I could, I'd live in a dry county. It drives away the people who need to have intoxicants to survive.
Yeah... when the US made alcohol illegal in the 1920s all the drinkers just moved to Canada. It certianly didn't suddenly make a large percentage of the population criminals, divert tons of resources and money to enforce it, and of course it didn't make the mob rich.
I think you need to move out of your neighborhood into a nice gated community that doesn't allow those pesky lower class people in.
For the record, I don't drink.
Para. 1: "... alcohol is anathema to business - in customer facing roles ..."
Para. 2: "... essential lubricant - high level sales, conventions, customers who offer it to salesmen."
You don't think we have a fundamental inconsistency here? I'm not poking fun at the poster, but at business mores.
Simple: one set of customers contains rich people, the other does not. Rich people can drink under any circumstance.