The Kirkland, WA Google Lakeview Office Complex.
The plan to build the Google offices in Kirkland started years ago. It sounded great for everyone, especially the Eastside Real Estate Market.
The rumor was that Google had grown and matured as a company and now had 100's of middle mangers and directors. They could not all make millions a year but they made good six figure incomes. However, around San Francisco and Mountain View California, six figures doesn't buy much. So the plan was to move some of this group to Kirkland where their salaries could buy nicer homes and schools for their children. All this while being close to the Microsoft brain trust and just a short flight back to the mother ship.
Click ahead to 2009. At a recent Bellevue Chamber business lunch the bad news came from Peter Wilson, Google site manager for its Kirkland offices. Peter said things have changed.
Basically, we are going to have a much scaled down version of the original plan. "As we enter this recession, we need to be prudent about how we manage our costs," Wilson said. "I started to have trouble trying to find work for all of these people."
The Kirkland Reporter can give you the details.
But according to Wilson, Google chose to open an office in Kirkland when two sought-after recruits refused to move to California contradicting the rumor that I talked about earlier. I guess you can't believe all the rumors, especially the ones about real estate.
Comments(1)