As the site leader for Microsoft’s presence here in Cambridge, it’s great to see that the Boston Business Journal has named Microsoft one of the Best Places to Work in Massachusetts. This designation from @BostonBizJournl recognizes our achievements in creating a positive work environment that attracts and retains employees through a combination of employee satisfaction, working conditions and company culture.
We are one of 60 companies to be honored; the top 20 companies in three size categories will be honored at an event on June 12th and profiled in a June 13th special supplement of the publication. I hope you’ll check it out online or in print.
As Chris McIntosh, publisher of the Boston Business Journal said in announcing the awards, “In good times and in bad, our results validate how the creation of the right corporate culture can create powerful business advantages. Employees are proud to work for companies that are about more than just business.”
We agree. From the time we created our presence here along the banks of the Charles River, looking into Boston, we wanted to be of the community, not just doing business in the community. As our Community page points out, since 2003 we’ve donated more than $78 million in cash and software to nonprofits and underserved communities in Massachusetts. And as our Events page demonstrates, there’s always something interesting happening here at NERD, or at our Boston retail store, or other stores in New England.
While Microsoft is headquartered across the country in Redmond, Washington, we’ve always recognized Massachusetts as one of the world’s leading centers for innovation. This state has:
- More than 200,000 tech industry employees;
- A thriving venture capital community; and
- More than 60 colleges and universities and more than 200,000 students in the Greater Boston area
We’ve always done a good job of identifying the talent here, and persuading quite a few to move across the country to Redmond.
But let’s face it, there are LOTS of reasons why you wouldn’t want to leave New England – and there is no reason you should NEED to leave in order to join Microsoft. We have been developing a critical mass of engineering, research, sales, marketing, retail and other talent for some time now. Just take a moment to check out some of the exciting work being done here, from Office 365, whose revenue grew more than 100 percent in our last quarter to our conversational understanding team working on exciting, new systems like Cortana for Windows phones that can talk and understand, to machine learning in the cloud, and of course Microsoft Research New England, which is one component of our worldwide research organization with more than 1,100 brilliant scientists and engineers pushing the boundaries of computing. The research organization here and in New York is led by Jennifer Chayes, who just last week was elected a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts & Sciences.
As Satya Nadella, Microsoft’s new CEO said earlier this year when he assumed his new role, “Many companies aspire to change the world. But very few have all the elements required: talent, resources and perseverance. Microsoft has proven that it has all three in abundance.”
That’s certainly been my experience. So if you’re intrigued by what the Boston Business Journal considers one of the hottest places to work in Massachusetts, check out our jobs page and see if there’s a role for you here. I’d love to meet you.
Julie Bennett
Site Leader, Microsoft N.E. R&D
@JulieBennett100