working for microsoft–6 years

i’m coming up on 6 years at microsoft and still wake up every day jazzed about what i do, the people i work with, and probably most importantly for me – some visionaries at the top.  i just read j allard’s internal memo “decide. change. reinvent.” and have been keeping an eye on both the public and internal posts by steven sinofsky.  for the first time in 6 years i’m preparing for a change and that process alone has me fired up again about microsoft, the future and my career.  you are not going to read a lot about windows 8 here on my blog – yet.  there are some really exciting things coming and i can hardly wait to open the flood gates and begin to share what i’ve experienced, learned and feel about the future.  what i will share in the spirit of j allard’s memo is my first impression of windows xp.

i loaded windows xp on a beige compaq computer that from the outside was very similar to the one j allard had when he joined microsoft.  the first experience was the new start menu where things just appeared because i had opened them and i was really resistant to change.  i was a technical trainer at the time and almost everyone that saw those early versions of windows xp had the same kinds of complaints – “this isn’t a business operating system like windows 2000”, “i will not use this at work – it might be ok for a home user”, “there better be a way to change this back to look like the old version of windows”.  microsoft is at a very early stage with the next version of windows and what i’ve learned from watching both from the outside and now working at microsoft is to fasten your seatbeats…

i started six years ago on a monday - october 31 to be exact.  next monday will be my 6 year anniversary and another monday, october 31st.  next week we wrap up our give campaign which i missed 6 years ago and has easily become my favorite time of year around the company.  today we’ve got an internal halloween party at the microsoft store in oak brook, il.  6 years ago a microsoft retail store was only a hope, today it’s a reality here and in most of the locations that i have family (making support much easier).  here’s to the next 6 years at microsoft.