The afternoon started with a bus ride back to Prague where the 2019 Cohort had lunch then visited the Microsoft building for a presentation and a tour.

The Microsoft building is a building built around creativity and flexibility. Each department has an area in the building, but there are no assigned desks…employees just plug their laptop into whatever desk they wish to work at for the day (or, they can work from home). On each floor, there is a communal room with fully stocked refreshments and snacks where people from different departments can meet and collaborate. There are themed conference rooms, recreation rooms (including a music room), and "family office" rooms (a room with a desk and toys/activities if you need to bring your children in to work with you).

After learning about the "unemployment zero" issue in Czechia, this was assumed to be part and parcel to compete for employees, however, during the presentation it was learned that this environment is throughout the entire corporation, not just endemic to Czechia. Microsoft is refocusing their business to cloud based services instead of just pushing product. They have recently introduced an app package called Teams which combines workplace chat, meetings, notes, and attachments and our presenters talked about their own adaptation to using Teams within the Microsoft Corporation.

Aside from discussing the new Teams app and the refocusing of the corporation, the presentation also discussed how the new CEO (as of 2014) has invigorated the corporation as a whole and they feel they are finally moving in a direction that will keep Microsoft relevant in the current and future markets.