By Erez Ben-Ari, JTNews Correspondent
One sunny day, nearly 20 years ago, an Israeli engineer by the name of Yaron Shamir, working at Microsoft’s campus in Redmond, decided it was finally time to go back to Israel. His boss at the time was not too thrilled about the decision, but Shamir had made up his mind. So Shamir’s boss made him a tempting offer: “Why don’t you start up a new development center over there, so we can at least keep you around?” Shamir recalls the supervisor as saying.
The boss, of course, was Bill Gates, and Yaron answered that he would. Shortly after, Shamir landed in Haifa and joined forces with Avi Nathan, another software engineer. They rented some office space and started to fish around for more local talent.
Until then, Microsoft had concentrated its entire development activity in the U.S. Early on, Shamir had to work hard to get his new recruits interesting projects. His team produced the fax tool included with Windows 95, pieces of IBM’s OS/2 operating system — parts of which were outsourced to Microsoft for development — among others.
In 1995, one modest product, Microsoft Proxy Server, software used by large companies to speed up their Internet access, eventually ballooned into a 200-person team that had increased the scope and capabilities of the product.
By 2006, Shamir had retired and Nathan had taken his place as general manager of the Haifa development center, when a dramatic change occurred. Moshe Lichtman, who held a key role at the Redmond campus, decided he wanted to relocate back to Israel and initiated a multitude of development projects at a newly built development center in Herzliya. He populated the site with many new hires, as well as employees from several acquisitions Microsoft made over the previous decade.
One of the key challenges facing the engineers in Israel is the need to work in tight cooperation with the Redmond headquarters. Thanks to modern networking, a lot can be accomplished using e-mail and video conferencing, and there’s less need for employees to travel the 7,000 miles between Israel and Washington.
There are, however, other hoops to jump through. One, of course, is the time difference. Israel’s workday starts at about midnight in Redmond, and when Washingtonians step into the office at 9 a.m., most of the employees in Israel are on their way home. Add to that the Israeli weekend, which is Friday-Saturday, it can be a challenge to arrange a direct dialog. Many employees have no choice but to get up really early or stay at the office past dinnertime.
Another, sometimes more amusing hurdle, is the language barrier. While every employee in Israel speaks good English, things can still get confusing. Dan Herzog, a senior engineer from the IAG team in Redmond, for example, faces frequent confusion.
“I was born in the U.S., and I don’t speak a word of Hebrew, but with a classic Hebrew name like Herzog, many Israelis assume I’m one of them,” he says. “I’ve even had to deal with people who refused to believe I can’t speak the language.”
Drory Ben Menachem, who works on user experience design with the Israel office, shares a similar, but more complicated story.
“Quite often, my English e-mails are replied to in Hebrew simply because I have an Israeli name,” says Ben Menachem. “As the son of Israeli parents and younger sibling to two brothers — all of whom speak Hebrew fluently — it is a point of embarrassment for me that my Hebrew language skills are so poor. So, whereas others might respond with a simple ‘English, please’ e-mail, I will spend minutes/hours wracking my brain to decipher the Hebrew — and sometimes resort to online translators (or a call to my brothers) for help with words I’m stuck on.”
On the Israeli side, there are more challenges. Though the offices in Israel are considered quite large by Israeli standards, it’s not quite like the tens of thousands of people working in Redmond, and some Israelis find it hard to comprehend and deal with the necessary administrative framework involved — this despite their country’s infamous red tape-laden bureaucracy. For example, Microsoft’s Information Technology group works hard to set certain standards to govern such practices as hardware and software purchases, and these standards help improve budget management. If an employee needs a new computer, he or she may find more administrative difficulties in doing so, because the computers sold in Israel might not meet the standards or regulations set by the U.S.-based IT group.
Naturally, with hundreds of engineers working at the Israeli sites, one of the consequences is a lot of migrations back and forth. Dozens of Israeli engineers have relocated to Redmond throughout the years, and a few Americans have relocated to Israel as well.
One of them is David Cross, a product unit manager in Haifa, who moved to Israel two years ago. Cross realized that despite the easy access to technology, relationships are still based on face-to-face contact. Without that pre-existing physical contact, he says, it’s difficult to build and develop those relationships. Cross travels to the United States frequently, but it’s still challenging on a daily basis.
“However,” Cross says, “this has some upsides, too. In Israel, we work from Sunday to Thursday, and so Sunday is a great work day. We hardly get any e-mails from the U.S. on Sunday, and that gives me a chance to get a lot of things done.”
Following the establishment of the site in Herzliya, in a few short years Microsoft’s Israel workforce has grown significantly, with more growth planned. Current projects include Headlight, a web-based advertising tool that offers zoomable information within a limited space, and HiTouchy, a multi-touch screen implementation developed in a week by just four engineers. According to Lichtman, the Israeli center conducts leading research in many areas from e-commerce to mobile services, all of which he believes will make global impacts in the coming years.
“Becoming the crown jewel of the software industry in Israel is a long-term aspiration of ours,” Lichtman says. “Thanks to the innovative culture of the center, coupled with its areas of focus, we have attracted top talent from Israel and abroad.”