This article is more than 1 year old

MS minions bid for Bill airtime again – attorney washes cars

Yes folks, it's the annual charity auction...

The items in this year's Microsoft charity auction are once again headed by a tour of Bill Gates' house, where the employee who makes the winning bid will gain a brief audience with His Billness. But there's some other chilling stuff there as well - how about getting chief counsel Bill Neukom to wash your car? On the other hand, why bother spending all that money now? As Bill N, known to his friends in the press as "a Microsoft attorney," has been masterminding the company's defence against the DoJ, you could just wait till after its all over then see him in his next job. If he can't wash your car, he can probably flip you a burger. But enough of cruel digressions. As we noted last year (Minions in bidding war to see Bill) Microsoft runs an annual charity auction where the staff bid stupidly huge amounts of money for all sorts of stuff. The co-ordinator last year foolishly blurted that many of them were willing to spend just to see Bill G, given that he was so busy. Last year's winning Bill bid was $42,525, and this year's might beat that. But we can't help noticing that last year they thought the tour would go for $50k. Oops. Also for sale is the "ultimate child's birthday party," in the Microsoft hardware room, which we're told houses some products that aren't on the market yet. Successful bidders should bear in mind that there's probably a good reason for that, but hey, they work for Microsoft so they know already. Or maybe they'd like a day with Microsoft's in-house art curator? Isn't it amazing that Microsoft has an art curator? The target for this year's auction is $15 million, while last year's achieved just over $12 million. Analysts more used to watching the company's quarterly numbers can confidently expect MS to beat estimates here as well. Microsoft itself matches the employees' donations, but rather cheese-paringly imposes a ceiling of $12,000 on the amount it will give per employee. Still, what a nice company...

More about

TIP US OFF

Send us news


Other stories you might like