Heading out on new adventures

When I started on the Systems Management Server (SMS) team 18 years ago, there were only about 30 engineers and any references execs made to the product were typically laced with profanity (and not the good kind).? But I was young, na?ve, and had wanted to work at Microsoft since I read Microserfs and saw Bill Gates on the cover of Wired magazine, so I figured it made sense to work at Microsoft for a couple years before quitting and founding my own startup. But days turned into weeks and into months and into years and I found that I loved working in the enterprise management space. Microsoft provided me with the opportunity to work on a product I loved, in a rapidly evolving market, with world-class engineers that blew me away!?

I often tell people that I have worked on the same team at the same company for 18 years and have never really done the same job two years in a row as both the team and my role in it grew. ? There are now hundreds of engineers working on our management products and services which are used by virtually every major organization in the world to manage hundreds of millions of devices. Some of my favourite highlights over the years:

• Standing backstage in Copenhagen watching Bill Gates kick off the Wall of Fire demonstrating the new Operating System Deployment pack feature for the first time
• The sugary snack fueled integration ‘days’ (a bit of a misnomer since they typically went past midnight) developing the first mobile device management solution for Intune
• Staying up to 4am in the morning trying to troubleshoot the new mobile device management agent on Steven Sinofsky’s ‘secret’ device
• Watching with anticipation as the installation numbers for the first release of ConfigMgr Current Branch rolled in
• Feeling a sense of profound sadness but at the same time inspiration and hope for the future as the team came together to discuss systemic racism and daily incidents of discrimination faced by some of the team members following the murder of George Floyd.
• Watching Brad Anderson on-stage at Ignite talking about how data analytics would revolutionize IT and knowing in my heart that Microsoft was committed to doing it in a way that protected end users’ privacy and ensured the security of customer data!

With all that, it is time for me to take the next step in my professional life. The decision to make a change is a personal one – and I continue to have an unbreakable faith and belief in the Security, Compliance, and Management team and Microsoft as a whole.

When I left home my father gave me two pieces of advice:

1. Don’t show up to work early on the first day since you will be setting yourself up to be a disappointment on day two when you just show up on time (this hasn’t been particularly useful since I have had the same job for the last 18 years -- but maybe I will get a chance to finally try it out again).
2. Don’t be the only person who can do your job – because if you are – you will never have the opportunity to do something else.

So the one thing that makes this change easier for me is the quality of the current leaders and the bench of architects on the team.? I take great solace in the fact that I get to leave a team that is much stronger, diverse, and functional than when I started.

I am going to take a few days off now and enjoy the last of the Pacific Northwest summer -- but am looking forward to sharing the next steps in my journey as they unfold over the coming weeks.

Cheers,

Brett