A friend (who currently works for Microsoft here in Vancouver, albeit remotely from the Richmond office) sent me a link to an NPR audio interview with Bill Gates, done after he testified to Congress about the need to liberalize H1-B visa rules. I have little interest in the US H1-B issues, but I am excited that he talked about the Vancouver development center (I first blogged about this on my personal site). The accompanying NPR story here:

Microsoft recently opened an office in Vancouver, Canada — where it can station high-skilled workers who can’t legally work in the U.S.

There, Gates tells Robert Siegel, the government welcomes “not only those people for these high-paying jobs, but the four or five jobs we create around each of those engineers.”

I haven’t heard much about the Microsoft Vancouver development center locally, and folks certainly haven’t been showing up at DemoCampVancouver or anything. I’ve heard some rumours that people only stay for a year, until they can do an intra-company transfer to the US (Redmond, likely), but I have no confirmation or knowledge about this directly.