SEATTLE: On a cloudless summer day, Manish Prabhu stares out at a converted soccer field thousands of miles from his native India and watches a cricket ball skip past some fielders dressed in white.
It is an unlikely place for a game of cricket, but Prabhu has spent hundreds of afternoons playing with the Microsoft Cricket Club on this bumpy turf near the company's campus in Redmond, Washington.
"The chance to play so much cricket surprised me," said Prabhu, a senior programme manager at Microsoft Corp's automotive business. "There is someone in almost every business team at Microsoft that I've played cricket with."
Microsoft's cricket programme -- comprising four teams that compete against other local teams -- is not just a corporate softball team for the globalization era. It is a valuable tool in keeping the company's largest minority group happy.
Changes in Redmond
Veteran "Microsofties" have noticed the changes. Hired by Microsoft in India in 1995, Sukhvinder Singh Gulati recalls visiting the Redmond campus early in his career and finding only a handful of Indians.
"If you saw an Indian on campus, you would be jumping for joy," said Gulati, who is a senior lead programme manager in Microsoft's unified communication division. "Today there are thousands and thousands of Indians working at Microsoft."
"Now people can feel at home at work," he said. "The friendships you've made at work also transfer to friendships outside the work hours. That helps a lot."
Microsoft celebrated major Indian holidays this year like Republic Day in January and Independence Day in August with on-campus events that included art displays, musical acts and special food.
Last year, Microsoft opened two Indian food stalls that operate inside the company's cafeterias. It also increased vegetarian options to suit Indian dietary needs.
Particularly noticeable to Microsoft veterans has been the increase of female Indian employees working in Redmond.
Ava Gupta, who joined the company two months ago, said she was surprised to see Indian women regularly come to work wearing a sari, traditional clothing worn in India.
"Outside of the World Bank or the United Nations, how often do you see people in America show up for work in their traditional clothing?" said Gupta, who works as a market researcher. "Here, I feel encouraged to be Indian."
While only 600 Starbucks locations in New York and Seattle will support the feature when it goes live October 2, the partnership could serve to educate users on the relatively new concept of accessing iTunes via Wi-Fi -- in much the same way that the ‘American Idol’ partnership with Cingular taught Americans how to text-message.
Ringtone service
What it is: Allows users to create a custom ringtone from any of the 5,00,000 songs in the iTunes catalog approved for ringtone use, for an additional 99 cents.
At press time, Warner Music Group and Sony BMG confirmed that they were providing music for the service. Sources close to the situation say Universal Music Group is not participating at this time.
What it means: Ringtones were noticeably missing from the iPhone debut this summer. While this new service fixes that problem, it's also led to complaints about consumers paying an additional fee to create a ringtone out of a song they already own -- particularly when multiple programmes are available online to create ringtones out of existing files for not only the iPhone, but many other devices as well.
The service also illustrates how Apple completely owns the iPhone experience and partner AT&T doesn't, upping the stakes in an ongoing struggle between mobile phone device manufacturers and wireless operators.
Competing against fast-growing technology companies in India offering jobs with handsome pay raises and quick promotions, Microsoft has to work harder these days to attract and retain the best and brightest Indian engineering talent.
Furthermore, Microsoft like many technology companies is being squeezed by US immigration quotas limiting the number of work visas issued to foreign nationals.
Over the last decade, as Microsoft has nearly quadrupled its workforce, it has hired scores of computer science graduate students from India who have stay on to work in the United States after finishing graduate school here.
Employees of Indian descent estimate they make up about 15 per cent of Microsoft's 35,000 workers in the greater Seattle area. The company does not keep track of such figures, but said it has made adjustments for changes in its workforce demographics.
"Our programmes and policies have changed given the diversity that has come into the company," said Mylene Padolina, a senior diversity consultant at Microsoft.
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