Beautiful Teams

Intermission: The Founding of a Panda Preserve

Two months after the rollout of the My.MP3.com service, it was finally time for the engineering department to move to its new building. For months now we had patiently waited as Randy Blumhagen, our facilities manager, worked his magic, and we were not disappointed. Walking into the building you were immediately confronted with a sweeping, curved stairway leading to the second floor (the first floor was still gutted and under construction at this point), black and blood-red carpet with sweeping flame designs awaiting as you crested into a 30 x 60-foot open space strewn with stylish furniture—gentle curves and overstated arms and backs—all designed to match a high-ceilinged, warehousey feel, bounded by a row of offices framed up on either side. To your right and left were groupings of chairs, couches, and tables—gathering places for "open room" meetings—with castle turret rounded walls and windows overlooking the 805 on one side and the identical "non-engineering" building on the other, parking lot filled with shiny cars.

All in all, the space was more a huge, high-industrial-ceilinged warehouse that happened to have a ring of offices on the outer, window-facing edge and what looked like a row of two or three shipping containers placed end to end—set about four feet from the outer ring of offices and with a half-length football field between them. There was another bank of offices, but they were dwarfed by the space, which was huge. And ...