WORK
Microsoft
First up in
Seattle we had Microsoft and its headquarters, hosted by the General Manager in
Customer Logistics, Dave Warrick, a cheery Irishman with a tendency to answer
any question more than thoroughly. The day started out with a bus ride,
provided by the most legendary driver giving us a tailor-made sightseeing
experience. In exchange, we sang a song to him to the amusement of other
commuters lucky enough to be onboard the same vehicle.
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| Xbox & NHL15 - "How to attract IEM students 101" |
We
reached the campus, a city in and of itself. Over 45 000 Microsoft employees do
their job there. Our target was Studio B, and after everyone had presented
themselves Dave told us about Microsoft with such enthusiasm and detailed
stories about the people working there that we could not help but get really
excited ourselves, too. Afterwards we had an absolutely thrilling discussion
with the people of Microsoft giving really interesting insights into various
subjects from their points of view.
A
group of us had something to be anxious, or excited, about: presenting their
case study to Dave & co! The rest is history, but tales tell that the
feedback that was received was pretty useful for all of us.
We
did have something all of us were really looking forward to, though: a visit to
the Envisioning Center, the place where the future is being presented. A funny
coincidence: there were other finnish people visiting the executive center at
the same time, the VTT! The things we saw at the Envisioning Center we cannot
share, but one thing's for sure: there was some pretty cool stuff.
Later on in
the evening we had a fabulous dinner with as many as 10 people hosting us at a
local restaurant. The Fillet Mignon was beyond imagination... Many fascinating
conversations were being had and acquaintances made. This also resulted in an
invitation for Saturday, of which more stories will be told in the adjacent
“free time” blog post.
The day was, all in all, a great success! A huge thank you to our hosts at Microsoft!
Boeing & Galvanize Seattle
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| Jeff Plant, Chief Process Architect, Commercial Airplanes, receiving his present |
On the
following day we had the honor of visiting Boeing. It started with a nice
surprise: we received greetings in Finnish from an experienced Boeing employee
who had moved from Finland nearly 40 years ago and worked at the firm for 20
years. We were also given a good overview of the company. We got insightful
answers to our numerous questions, such as how an airplane manufacturer deals
with a delayed r&d and delivery project. The crown jewel of our visit was
the manufacturing hall, though: the largest building in the world by volume,
where new Boeing aeroplanes are being produced at a surprisingly fast pace. To
see the building and assembly process in real life was a dream come true for a
great part of our team. The scale of everything was astonishing, ranging from
the tools to the engines of the new planes.
Right after
Boeing we headed for something completely different: a startup coworking space
in downtown Seattle, Galvanize. The transit there did not go entirely according
to our plans; Uber's servers went down for some 20 minutes, which resulted in
some surprising charges appearing afterwards. Anyway, we were wished warmly
welcome and after being given a tour in the brand new working spaces in which
also courses on computer science are given, we found ourselves on a brilliant
rooftop hangout area with refreshments (some of which were finished pretty soon
after our arrival). Our list of rooftops visited on this trip was growing! New
connections and friendships were made during the afternoon and early evening.
PLAY
We left New
York in two separate batches and the first group had an unpleasantly early
fight, having to wake up at 3am. Despite the hurry in the morning, everyone got
to the airport in time. The other group got to sleep a couple of hours longer
so they didn’t have to rush their morning. After layovers in Cincinnati and
Chicago, the whole project team arrived safely in Seattle.
The first night in Seattle was all freetime, including dinners and beers around
the city in smaller groups. Quite a few people also took advantage of the
washing machine in the hostel. By the end of the evening we had also acquired a
proper “torspo” -symbol, which was handed to Joona - rest of the story may well
stay within our team. The torspo-symbol is a green monkey, a mascot of Seattle
Sounders, and it was immediately considered to be a bit too cute to be a
“punishment”.
After the excursions of Thursday we headed to the hostel for a power-nap and
then to a bar to grab a beer before the dinner. The bar had also an own brewery
and some twenty local beers on tap, which were definitely worth tasting! After
the dinner some of us decided to check out Seattle’s nightlife and headed to
Capitol Hill, recommended by locals. Probably needless to say that the night
went on for quite a while. Team Capitol Hill got also quite confused of
Washington state liquor legislation.
Saturday was fully free of any excursions and people could do anything they
wanted. Some of us went for a morning jog and a quick swim in the Lake Washington
whereas some headed straight to the city. Pike Place Market was a popular
attraction among our group, everyone made at least a quick visit to the
neighborhood of the original starbucks cafe. Another popular activity was
shopping in the huge malls downtown, and by the time we gathered in the
evening, most of us had some bags of newly purchased clothes with them. At 6pm
we had booked tickets to the famous Space Needle where we got some pretty cool
pictures of Seattle from almost 200 meters above of the ground.
After the
Needle we continued for rooftop drinks, since a Microsoft employee had invited
us for an event she was organizing at the rooftop of her apartment. And the
roof.. There aren’t words to impress our reactions when we saw the roof
terrace. It was big enough to fit at least a hundred people, maybe even two
hundred. It had two barbecues and several gas heated lamps, as well as a gas
heated fire pit. The terrace had views not only to the sea, but also to the
Space Needle and the downtown. We all were able to take some great pictures of
the surrounding city as well as other people on the terrace. There were also a
bunch of people from Microsoft at the party so we had a great opportunity to
continue our chats from Thursday. Later that evening also the 240 red cups
turned out to be quite useful… Our host was also very delighted from our
present (bottle of Finlandia) and especially loved the way we handed it
alongside a proper song (hyvät ystävät).
All in all,
Seattle was a great city and many of us liked it even better than New York.
Definitely worth a visit, if you are going somewhere near it! Unfortunately our
visit was quite short and we had to squeeze our touristing basically into only
one day. The city does however offer a great variety of working places, so
maybe some of us will end up their later again, who knows. Microsoft, Boeing
& Amazon are large employers in the area, and many other tech firms such as
Apple, Google and Alibaba are strengthening their presence in Seattle.
All good
things come to an end, and so we headed for Bay Area with a painfully early
flight. Right now we’re at our AirBnB accommodation at Santa Clara. Looks like
this stage of our journey is going to be equally awesome, so stay tuned…!
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