Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella is shaking things up at the company, and an event on the Redmond campus this morning is the latest example: It’s a 38-hour hackathon, designed to tap the creative energy of employees, help bring the best ideas to market faster, and put fresh eyes on Microsoft’s legacy code bases.
Nadella opened the event a few moments ago with a brief address to employees. He referenced the natural tendency to complain about products internally, and said the event presents an opportunity to take action.
“This is the time to stop the criticism and do something about it,” he said, before turning the crank on a siren to kick off the event.
More than 10,600 Microsoft employees around the world are participating in the hackathon, part of a larger internal Microsoft event called //oneweek that replaces the traditional day-long company meeting.
The event comes a little more than a week after Microsoft announced the largest layoffs in its history, part of a broader strategy by Nadella to streamline the company’s engineering processes.
The hackathon is now in full swing in a temporary facility called “Hackopolis” on the Microsoft soccer fields. We’re checking out some of the projects and will have more on GeekWire later today.
Follow-up: Inside Microsoft’s hackathon: Big ideas and new traditions at a tech giant in transition
