Learning to Dance in the Rain

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A friend of a friend emailed me to ask about how I liked working at Microsoft.  This was my response.  I include it here because I think his questions are quite common for someone considering working here.

Disclaimer: I will attempt to answer your questions to the best of my
ability.  The facts I give you will be based on my own experience and
memory.  No guarantee from Microsoft is expressed or implied by the
content of this email.

 

I’m in my last year at BYU (Information Systems major), and now is the time for me to start looking at jobs. I have another friend, who has a friend working at MS who personally knows the recruiter for the West. He’s going to have her contact me.

That’s a good idea.  Get to know your recruiter.  The one I worked with was fun and very friendly. 

 

I was hoping you could tell me a bit of how it’s been for you at MS? Do they overwork recent grads? I have heard they overwork them and burn them out in a few years, then drop them and replace ‘em with another recent grad. True? Could just be all the conspiracy theories. J

That wreaks of conspiracy theory. 🙂 Yes they hire grads, yes  some will leave, and yes more will be hired in a few years as they do every year.  Do they overwork them?  Not unfairly, to be sure.  On the contrary, I get the sense that they very much value the grads (and everyone) they hire. 

I just attended a techfair hosted specifically for interns and new college hires where Steve Ballmer spoke.  He said that their approach to new hires matches their approach with new technology: Work with it, even for years, until it rocks!

Now as far as overworking in general, … but I’ll save this for your next question.

 

How’s work life? Do you bring lots of work home with you? Late days? 50 hours weeks (or more)?

First of all, it very much depends on the team you work for, from what I’m told.  Second of all, ask your recruiter what Microsoft means about the “work-life balance”.  It’s very impressive.  Microsoft’s goal is to get their employees working 40 hour weeks.  And in some teams they have achieved it.  In other teams, like those affiliated with Vista, they are working much harder, from what I hear.  I wanted to work on Vista (or thought I did) when I applied, but one of my interviewing managers corrected me (and I’m grateful).  Vista will be awesome, but right now those development teams are working overtime.

My team is awesome.  I work approximately 40 hour weeks.  Sometimes slightly more or less.  If I need to come in late or leave early on a given day, I can just do that without even talking to my manager first.  They trust you here to use your judgment, and they just want you to get your work done.  Pretty much you can set your own hours as long as they cover the meetings you need to attend.

Traffic is bad.  I choose to take the bus so I can pursue my own interests while in traffic rather than just drive a car.  It takes a little longer (sometimes — other times it seems faster), but at least I can use my time productively.  Including travel (from where I live) I’m probably away from home nearly 50 hours per week.

As far as taking work home with me.  heh heh.  I love my job.  I asked my manager for a laptop, explaining that I’d like to be able to do work from home if I can’t sleep or whatever.  He said no.  But get the reason: because “when you’re home, you should be home.  You shouldn’t have to work at home.” 

 

Has anything disappointed you – meaning, were you expecting/promised something you didn’t get?

The biggest disappointment wasn’t that big.  It was simply that in the application form for my interviews, MS asked me what the minimum salary I would require to work there is.  They merely matched (ever-so-slightly overshot) that minimum.  But see the answer to your later question for more on this.

Microsoft has no “fountain of knowledge”.  You have to work out solutions to problems here just like any other programming job.  I guess I should have known that.

 

Has anything exceeded your expectations?

The weather is very enjoyable (we like the rain, though in the summer it hardly rains).  We’re the only state that’s regularly under 100 degrees last I checked. 

I was struck during my on-campus interviews with how friendly everyone was here.  That feeling has only increased.  The mutual respect among employees is unlike anything I’ve experienced.  People here “take ownership” of your questions; they find solutions for you if you ask rather than just say “I dunno” and/or point you in another direction.  Of course that doesn’t happen 100% of the time, but it makes me feel like I’m at a grocery store where employees are always waiting to help you find something.  Except they’re your coworkers.

 

Are people being ethical where you work? I hope so. J

Absolutely.  Entirely.  Microsoft has a strong ethical and legal guidelines handbook and they push it hard down all employees (I think annually).  There are private reporting mechanisms for when anyone (including your superiors) do something you think is unethical, including protection against the “whistle blower”.  I’ve never had any reason to wonder about anyone’s behavior here though.

In fact, although the outside feeling about Microsoft seems to be negative in many circles, being on the inside during some of these “scandals” like the multi-hundred-million-dollar fine from the European Commission against Microsoft for protocol documentation has allowed me to hear their side of the story and realize that Microsoft really is trying hard to comply with all laws and overall good citizens.  It seems to me that bad/inflammatory news sells, and Microsoft has made a very popular target of late.  But I feel good being inside Microsoft knowing that I work for a company that is full of employees who are real people who are just trying to do their job the best they can.

 

I’d appreciate comments. I’m wanting a good job after I graduate, like everyone is.

I would suggest you apply multiple places.  If you get an offer from Microsoft, other offers will give you a reference of comparison so you can see how great Microsoft’s offer is. 

The employee benefits offered by Microsoft truly are “second to none”, as their HR goal states.  I can’t begin to enumerate them.  If you can fathom it, Microsoft probably offers it.  I’ll just list a few: having a baby is free, finding a baby is significantly paid for (adoption), not having a baby is free (various modes of temporary or permanent birth control), non-profit org donation (in $$ or time) matching, free day care for kids on days you work but your kids don’t go to school, 401K matching, employee stock purchase plan, target performance bonuses of 10% and can be up to 20% of annual salary, annual pay raises (that barely keep up with inflation), life insurance, $0 deductibles and copays for doctors visits and medications, 2 weeks paid vacation that you can carry over up to one year (and this increases with time; I have a coworker with what… 5 weeks?!), 8 more paid holidays, 2 floating holidays (you pick the days), 10 paid sick days (that you can use if anyone in your immediate family is sick), 4 weeks of paternity/maternity leave when you have each baby., free health club membership and significant discounts for your spouse, tons of discounts and great treatment from local businesses, paid for tuition for continuing your education (at least a significant portion, if not fully)…  are you beginning to get the idea?  Oh! And the health insurance applies to your whole family and does not come out of your paycheck. 

I know exact pay isn’t appropriate to share, but did you get what you hoped for? Do they pay competitively for where you are?

Notwithstanding my earlier comment about salary, I feel that Microsoft has treated me fairly.  Inputting my skills and geographic area into salary.com produced a pay range within which my salary from Microsoft fits.  And the process for promotions and pay raises  is clearly laid out for all employees to read. 

When comparing offers, be sure to go to web sites that give you standard costs of living for the areas you’d work for each offer you get.  A condo in the Puget Sound area of Washington (where main campus is and the surrounding areas) costs twice as much as a medium-sized house in Provo.  That should factor in to tell you that you can’t compare salaries like apples-to-apples.  Also, the state of WA doesn’t charge income tax.  You still have federal income tax of course.

 

Thanks a ton for your help and insights.

You’re welcome.  I hope you found them useful.

So when I was an LDS missionary my mission pushed the Lock Your Heart article on the missionaries quite strongly.  With good reason, I guess.  There were stories of elders from my mission, like the one who went home early, came back and married a 35-year-old divorced woman with children.  That’s the craziest.  Plenty of other elders I know personally married sisters that they were zone leaders over, or served around, etc.  My ears were just ringing with Lock Your Heart, so every time I met an RM who had a story like this, I judged him harshly.  Read on…

So Lock Your Heart is allegedly a transcript from a talk given by Elder Spencer W. Kimball.  In short, I don’t believe that it’s authentic any more.  My first tip off was that there were too many typos.  Then I couldn’t find it anywhere on the official Church web site.  Finally, according to the transcript, I believe Elder Kimball contradicts himself in the article.  For example:

Well, is there any harm to marry a Mexican
girl if you are working in Mexico? No, that isn’t any crime, but it proves
that some missionary has had his heart open! He has unlocked it!

Really?  Well what if you didn’t meet this Mexican girl while serving in Mexico?  That seems harsh to say you can never marry a girl whose nationality coincides with where you served.  But in the next example, Elder Kimball allows for this:

Is it
wrong to marry a German girl when you have been on a German mission? Why
no, there is no crime in that, if you met her some other way. But when
you meet her in the mission field and you have opened your heart, I tell
you it isn’t right, and you have shortchanged your mission!

That’s better, but it means something different from the last example.  Secondly, if you met a girl in the mission field, think nothing of it, and years later run into her again and marry her, that should be harmless.  President Hinckley agrees with me on this point.  From his talk “What This Work is All About”:

I first met Jack in Japan when he was serving as a missionary there. … [This man had] a great effort and a great sense of
devotion, and above all, a certain humility and reliance on the Lord
with anxious, prayerful pleadings for help.
…
I also first met in Japan and interviewed on a number of occasions the
young lady he was later to marry. She had a wonderful spirit, a deep
faith, and a moving sense of duty.  Their acquaintance in the field was nothing more than having seen one
another on one occasion. They worked in widely separated areas. But out
of their experiences had come a common touchstone—a new language in
which each had learned to share testimony with others while laboring in
the great and selfless cause of service to our Father’s children.

And he goes on to say many great things about each of these RMs and how wonderful their life is together.  The talk isn’t about how people can marry those they meet on their mission, but in talking about what missionary work is about, President Hinckley would not use an example like this if he thought it was a bad example.  Obviously, people who were acquainted in the mission field can marry later without somehow, mysteriously, shortchanging their mission that is already over and done.

I honor and respect President Spencer W. Kimball.  That’s why I don’t believe he really gave that talk.  And if he did, I believe the transcription is faulty.  While I oppose going on a mission to find a bride or groom, and I oppose flirting on a mission, and I support mission rules regarding not writing letters to people in the mission field while you’re serving in it, I nevertheless believe that there are perfectly acceptable circumstances in which you can marry someone who lived within your mission boundaries.

So I watched a prescreen viewing of Superman Returns today. It was alright. The scenes were definitely intense and some thrilling. The scenery and people are much more modern (much more than five years) than they were in the first movies (I only saw Superman I and II). Cell phones and the Internet are popular.  

Unfortunately, so is the family decay. (possible spoiler follows)

Lois Lane has a live-in boyfriend, and they have a kid together. It gets worse. Everyone explains to Superman, including Lois, that “five years is a long time”, and things change. Superman came back to Earth expecting Lois to still be in love with him. She explained with a torn heart that five years is a long time, and she had no idea whether he was coming back.

Well, it turns out that the young kid is Superman’s instead of her Lois’ live-in boyfriend. Hmm… doing the math, I calculate that Lois didn’t wait five years for Superman before hooking up. In fact, she didn’t wait a month. If Lois had a kid by Superman and thought it was Richard’s (her live-in boyfriend), things must have developed awfully fast when Superman disappeared.

It’s a shame how an otherwise great movie can be tainted by modern society’s degrading values.

So we got a ferret to join us in our little condo that we found on Craigs List.  Although it has had its scent glands removed, and the cage is freshly cleaned, the smell very quickly overtook our home, and we are looking for some family who is already accustomed to pets and their smell to take this sweet ferret home with them.

Lessons learned:

1. Visit a potential pet in its current environment before officially adopting it. (i.e. don’t have it delivered sight unseen).
2. Ask for a grace period in which you can return it.
3. Don’t get a pet when you have just a little space for it, where the smell can build up.

I’ve heard this all over the place: “I could care less”.  What does the person usually mean when he/she says this?  That they don’t care, of course. 

But think about it for just a minute: If you could care less, that means you must care something about it already.  I believe that this mis-quoted phrase probably stems from the more correct “I couldn’t care less”, and people just dropped the n’t without thinking about how they were significantly changing its meaning.

I had a co-worker named Kevin several years back who told me that people, in general, don’t like to think.  This is just one small piece of evidence in support of this claim. 

If you have used this phrase, consider thinking about what you say a bit more, please.  Let’s keep the english language a little less confusing to those learning it. 🙂

I don’t know if this phrase pervades outside the LDS culture like it does within it.  It is often embroidered to pictures of Christ.  The idea being portrayed is that life is hard, but it will be worth it because of Christ.

That simple idea is fine, but literally speaking, the saying is false, and its reverse is actually what is true:  Christ did say it would be easy, but he never said it would be worth it.  Think about it.  Can you find a scripture where he does? (literally speaking)

Now, of course Christ believed and taught principles consistent with the idea that yes, of course salvation is “worth it”.  But he also said taking His yoke upon ourselves is easy.  Let’s not get life (which is hard) confused with following Christ (easy). 

And let’s think about these catchy phrases before we allow them to permeate our entire culture.

I have been in many ward choirs.  These are some pointers I have that I believe can apply to every choir director.  I appreciate all choir directors, and I am glad they take their time to serve us.  I certainly do not have the skill to do what they do, and I appreciate their selfless service.  Nevertheless, I believe some improvements could be easily made.  But if you are a choir director please do not take anything personally or as an attack — especially if you are one of my own current or past choir directors!  In other words, these are written more for humor than anything else.  If you do not find it funny, stop reading.

1. End choir practice at the scheduled time, and not a minute later.  Consider ending early if you are at a convenient stopping place.
2. One or two people do not constitute a majority.  When you ask “Shall we sing it one more time?” and only one or two people respond affirmatively, that means that everyone else is silently responding “no”.  Ditto for “Do you want to stand?”
3. Leaning over a first row choir member to conduct directly to the third row makes people nervous.
4. Don’t specifically invite “all members, including those who can’t sing” to choir.  Those who can sing become less enthused about attending themselves.  Choirs should sound pleasant.
5. Consider singing the music as it is written.  It is perfectly acceptable to sing a hymn out of the book without stuffing as much variety as possible (or more so!) into the verses with unison/parts/harmony or new verses. 
6. If you have limited practice time before the performance, consider simplifying the selection before you call an extra weeknight rehearsal.
7. Never, never say “Let’s sing it just once more(, I promise).”  I have never met a choir director who lived up to that promise even once, so do not even pretend you will live up to it.  You tease us with the concept of getting home to eat, then we practice the piece three more times.
8. Give the choir time to talk to each other.  Singing can be an inspiring experience, and singing with people you know and love greatly enhances that.  Just two or three minutes per rehearsal of “talk with your neighbor” time can go a long way to putting smiles on the choir’s faces both for rehearsals and for performances.  We will probably pay more attention when you are talking as well.
9. When working with a small section of the choir, invite the others to sit down.
10. Do not ask us whether we want to sit with the congregation or in the choir loft for the rest of the meeting.  We will be divided anyway, just tell us what to do.  We will do what you say.

I suppose I should mention that I am the primary developer behind the RELATE Institute web site.  It utilizes C#, ASP.NET, XSLT, XSL-FO.  It is divided into several class libraries and an ASP.NET web front-end.  A significant class library behind the site is about to be open-sourced so I can work on it even after I leave to work for Microsoft.  Almost all the lessons that I post on my JMPInline blog comes from my developing RELATE.

Microsoft flew me up for a second round of interviews last week.  I interviewed with the Sparkle team and the .NET Compact Framework team.  Tonight I received an email from my recruiter congratulating me on an offer from the .NET Compact Framework team.  How exciting!

Details pending a phone call next Monday.

This is a rant about BYU’s bike policy.

BYU has a list of rules posted all over campus about where and how bikes can ride and park.  Many of them are reasonable.  The really annoying one is that we can only park our bikes at installed bike racks.  There are too few of them, and they are not in the right places.  Depending on where you are on campus, you might have to park your bike 1-2 buildings away in order to get to where you are going because no bike rack is closer.  The worst thing though is that the racks that are there are too small.  During the school year, the bike rack between the Kimball Tower and the McKay building is so full that it is literally impossible to tie a bike up on the rack.  So what can you do besides park 3 buildings away?  I have tried tying my bike up to a nearby handrail or tree when no space was available on the bike rack.  I made sure it would not be in anyone’s way.  And I’ve gotten warnings stuck on my bike by the campus police telling me I could get a fine for doing this again.

Stupid.  This university already has a serious car parking problem.  They could alleviate much of it by providing enough bike racks to encourage more bicycles.  There have been many days where I took the bus just because I figured I could not compete for space at the bike racks.  It’s more friendly to the environment for me to take a bike.  BYU should encourage this behavior.