Call it the company town for the 21st century. New Oroville, located just outside Hyderabad, India, will welcome its first residents in July - all employees of Catalytic Software. Some 4,320 eco-friendly domes will house workers - who receive a living allowance that can be used to pay rent - as well as offices, temples, shops, restaurants, and even a skating rink. New Oroville was designed to keep programmers from seeking work overseas and to persuade them to accept a salary in line with local standards - often less than a first-year signing bonus in the US. The roughly $150 million project (www.catalyticsoftware.com/neworoville.htm) is the brainchild of three Americans, all former Microsoft brass. When it comes to maintaining order in a country where cows dictate the flow of traffic, Catalytic CEO Swain Porter takes a very Redmond-like approach to self-government: "New Oroville is our place. We set the rules. We enforce them. We're not going to have a lot of discontents."
ELECTRIC WORD
Freeze-O-Matic
Liquid Audio
Welcome To The Cubicle Dome
Flesh For Fantasy
Beam Therapy
Bugs That Scale
Going With The Flow
