Microsoft North
You read it here first, unless you read it at CBC like I did, or any number of other places: Microsoft will be opening a development office in Vancouver.
This is great news for the Vancouver area, and not at all surprising. Vancouver hosts a solid and active tech community, and more than a few innovative names have found their start here.
From the news item:
“For the time being, it’s a centre for great talent. We’re using it as a place to locate talent rather than to get a specific piece of work done,” Sharif Khan, vice president of human resources of Microsoft Canada, told CBCNews.ca
The staff will consist of a few hundred programmers initially, and is expected to grow. Khan said the company would be looking for talent from the U.S., Canada and abroad, but will also transfer some existing employees.
For the time being? C’mon, give us some credit here. Or is something changing that I haven’t heard yet?
From the article, the key driver seems to be that Vancouver is a convenient and friendly place to park talent that can’t locate inside the US because of immigration policies. And personal bias aside, I think Vancouver is an easy sell for relocating new employees. A sensible move for a global company, and one that will certainly open new opportunities for our excellent local crop of tech workers.
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