I just read a really old blog post from Steven Sinofsky. He’s a pretty big deal at Microsoft, and he writes a great blog with all kinds of advice for college grads about what it’s like to work at Microsoft. If you are thinking of joining Microsoft, definitely check out his blog.
But this particular article struck me as somewhat comical. I never thought of the weather as much of a selling point for a job, much less as a selling point for Seattle! Steven fairly posts the cold, hard facts about the weather – that it rains for 155 days per year in Seattle. (That’s 42% of the days) They even have streaks of rain every day for 3 or more weeks at a time there! But then he goes on to pitch that the climate there is actually a moderate one, going so far as to state, “Most people are surprised to learn that it really doesn’t rain all that much in Seattle“. Huh? I’m not sure how much rain is “all that much” by his measure, but I guess we all have our own opinions. To me, that is great salesmanship, Steve! Believe in your product!
Truth be told, if you are going to work for Microsoft, definitely move to Redmond. The campus is great, the people are great, and you’ll have a blast working on great technology. But make no mistake – with the exception of a very short summer – the weather is wet. Steven claims that, “No matter where you live, people can find a reason to complain about the weather (or is it weather forecasting?)”, but he’s just lived in Seattle too long. Here in California, we don’t dwell on the weather, except to debate whether we should bike to work or surf.
We still get less annual rainfall than many of the cities — it is more cloudy here than wet 🙂