So now I work in Bellevue

The Search organization at Microsoft is slowly but surely consolidating its entire team to the new offices being built in Bellevue. My team moved this past week to the City Center Plaza, which isn't done yet but apparently enough floors are complete to start moving the cattle in.

I must say, I think it will be nice working in Bellevue. My concern about the move was primarily around traffic and parking. In general, it is hell getting through Bellevue, the I-90/405 interchange, finding parking, etc. And that's on the weekends. I expected a workday to be infinitely worse. To my delight, I've found that traffic is not bad before 8am (nice that this entire town is a sleep-in town), and since only the first three floors of our new 26 story building are occupied, parking is not yet an issue. Although it will be in time - there's clearly not enough parking to support the entire building when it's finished.

Back to "it being nice working in Bellevue," by that I mean it's convenient to a myriad of lunch locations, shopping (Bellevue Square is a couple blocks away), Lincoln Square, etc. Nice to be in a city instead of "just a campus of Microsoft office buildings" that is Redmond. Already our team has enjoyed a fine lunch at El Gaucho and a movie at the local movie theatre (Terminator Salvation). Although having 27 Starbucks within two blocks is really annoying.

Oh yeah, nice having my own office again :)

New digs are so nice I took the family there today so they could check it out for themselves.