GeekWire - Salesforce drops Tableau HQ building

As we head into the U.S. Memorial Day Weekend, we’ve got a few stories and takeaways to share from the week before logging off, including an impromptu adventure driving around Amazon’s HQ. – GeekWire co-founder Todd Bishop.

Farewell, Tableau HQ: Walking past Tableau's headquarters building near the north shore of Lake Union in Seattle this week, I noticed that it looked empty, and made a mental note to look into it. The news moved faster than I did. 

• Salesforce, which acquired the Seattle-based data visualization company for $15.7 billion in 2019, confirmed Friday afternoon that it will put the 205,000-square-foot building, aka NorthEdge, on the sublease market.

• It’s part of a broader pullback, but Tableau and Salesforce will still have a presence in the region. For example, Salesforce says it will now keep the nearby Data 1 Building, which it had planned to shed. Read the story.

Podcast in a parking garage: Leaving the Technology Alliance annual luncheon Thursday afternoon, where we heard from T-Mobile CEO Mike Sievert, my colleague John Cook and I found ourselves on the upper floors of a clogged parking garage as seemingly all 700+ attendees tried to pay and exit simultaneously. We made the most of it, recording the GeekWire Podcast using John’s phone in my car as we inched forward. It worked surprisingly well!

• We discussed our takeaways from Sievert’s comments on AI, national security concerns over Chinese hacking, downtown safety, housing affordability, and getting employees back to the office.

• Sievert's comment about AI that resonated most with me was: “It’s going to be simultaneously bigger than most people expect, and take a little longer than the hype cycle suggests.”

• Since we were talking about the return to the office, we decided to check out Amazon HQ first-hand when we finally escaped the garage. Shenanigans ensued, as you can hear on the show.

Also listen for highlights from Sievert throughout the show. Thanks to the Tech Alliance for the audio of his conversation with Jonathan Sposato, GeekWire’s chairman. Note to self: next time, street parking or public transportation.

Listen here, or subscribe to GeekWire in Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen.

Not even close: That’s the upshot of the full results from Amazon’s shareholder meeting this week, released Friday afternoon in a regulatory filing. 

• None of the record 18 shareholder proposals surpassed 40% of the vote, let alone the majority needed for approval. 

• Resolutions related to warehouse working conditions and Amazon's response to unions did the best, each securing 35% of the vote

• Overall, it’s a setback for labor and climate advocates who had seemed to be getting closer to a win, considering last year’s results.

Read the story, and see our earlier coverage of the meeting for more.

What’s your Personal Legend? That’s the core question raised by the novel The Alchemist, by Paulo Coelho, which was a favorite of Michael Smyers, the Seattle software engineer and serial entrepreneur who died recently at the age of 39 from colon cancer. Smyers’ own Personal Legend, his partner says, was “entrepreneurship that changed the world.” Read more.

Hot links:

• Microsoft is axing its ergonomic keyboards, the ones that split down the middle to let your hands rest naturally. Fans are upset. (CNBC)

• Speaking of AI hype, early users say this video of Adobe’s Firefly technology in Photoshop doesn’t quite live up to current reality. It's still a jaw-dropping illustration of where things are headed. (YouTube)

• Microsoft will open 120 new datacenters this calendar year, or one new facility every three days, its cloud and AI chief Scott Guthrie said at Build this week (via Charles Fitzgerald's excellent weekly roundup).

Enjoy the long weekend! We’ll be back in your inbox on Tuesday.