My last day at Microsoft...

Today is my last day at Microsoft. After 15 amazing years, this part of my journey comes to an end so that another exciting part may start.?But before I share the new, I want to reflect on what has come before and the impact you all have had on me. My journey has and always will be about people, what follows is focused on thanking all of you for the amazing time we had together.

Growing up in small towns in the Netherlands, I never really imagined that working at Microsoft was a possibility; it seemed to be part of a different universe or something out of books or movies.

So, when I "corrected" Howard Wooten at a Mix07 breakfast table in Vegas on some random Silverlight fact, and was immediately asked about working here, I brushed it off as American "friendliness". I did not consider it again until a few days later when I got an e-mail introducing me to Dan Ledrick and Jon Gallant , discussing intros and interviews for MSDN.

Even after I massively bombed two interview loops, they decided to still take a gamble on me. I do not think it really sank in until I landed in Vancouver and drove down to Redmond campus a few days later, to meet my team in Building 5 for the first time.

What followed was a flurry of fast flowing fun years at MSDN, learning new culture, new country, building cool new tech, but also learning how to navigate this unique company. All the while getting to meet some amazing people: Matt Bowen , Bobby Bhamra , Simon Muzio , Nathan Pirone, PMP , Tim Pearson , Duncan Smith , Tobin Titus , Beth Massi , Howard Dierking , Scott Hanselman , Cyra Richardson , Travis Muhlestein , John Martin , Taylor Parsons , Bryan Thomas , Tina Hussar , Sam Jarawan , Michael Servais , Christopher Dahl , Ruurd Boeke , Alessandro Capistrano , Mario Esposito , Alex Norcliffe , John Molloy , Tim Shakarian , Sean Gephardt , Jesse Liberty , Kerby Kuykendall, CSM, CSPO , and Peter Illetschko .

My next opportunity presented itself when I met Jeff Stride , who was looking for someone to run and fix up MSN Mobile, where I got to manage a team of fantastic engineers and meet more amazing people that constantly pushed me to grow: Ted Cahall , Brian Pane , Paul Roy , Katie E. , Don Gillett , Ian Ferreira , Chandra Chivukula , Lisa Brogan ,? Bhavesh Thaker , Christian Molnar , John Evans , Robert Moyer , Candice Jackson , Carina Harper , Eric Passmore , Beth Wood , Kerryn Frampton , Chris Moore , Izi Behar , Ron Logan , Chris Beiter , Dan Boerner , Craig Suthers , Jen Guriel , Binzy Wu , Jonathan Gill , and Dave Morgan

Then Brian MacDonald , Jigar Thakkar and Troy Batterberry merged with MSN and started us down the path of a full rewrite. We re-built dozens of separate systems run by thousands of people into a single one needing only a fraction, all the while being the first to properly push scale on early Azure (Half a billion daily users!) and generally having a blast doing it! To this day, I fondly remember the extremely difficult and amazingly joyful days, while I got to meet even more amazing people: Eric Lam , Don Draper , Diego Baca , Eugene Chigirinskiy , Adam Carr , Mark Longton , Janine Perret , Brian Collinwood , Shelly Forsberg , Scott Leong , Graham Sheldon , Pedro Pontes , Hugh Rubin , Radu Bacioiu , and Jay Ongg

This all lead to the last mind blowing eight years at Microsoft Teams, thank you Brian and Jigar Thakkar for taking yet another bet on me!?

From its inception in Vegas and Maui, the New York times Slack middle page ad welcoming us to our wild growth (fastest in company history); from just our small group of 20 dogfooding users to tens of thousands, to millions, and now hundreds of millions daily users, while being the world's backbone during COVID. I can't even begin to explain how privileged I feel having been part of that journey and all the amazing people I was able to meet during that time!?

Angela Sze , Luis Carrasco , Ryan Flowers , Sharad Bajaj , Debi Mishra , Ravindra Kumar Agrawal , Thad Scott , Kyle Blevens , Mira Lane , Bhrighu Sareen , David Golds Bill Bliss , Diego Baca , Alex O. , Rekha P. , Sharvari N. , Tomá? Bergl , David Golds , Marcus Ash , David Golds , Jessica Ostrow , Ben Canning , Dan Stevenson , Jessie Hwang , Janie Dalton , Rohit Pagariya , Husayn Versee , Mike RothKugel , Kara Saucerman , Jim Muliawan , Jason Xu , DJ Park , Alok Sinha , Levi Thomason , Mansoor Malik Mansoor Jafry Chris Sano , Mat S. , Eloy Durán , Vinny Pasceri , Fernando Garcia Valenzuela , Kenneth Chau , Sanjeev Katariya , Amit Sehgal , Levi Thomason , Mila Ciobanu, Paul Hamilton , Enrique Urrieta , Amy Stiuca , Maria Rekowska , Sudhamsu Mylavarapu , Larry Waldman , Joel Sifuentes , Daisy Geng , Rohit Wad , Chad Voss , Brigette Lundeen , Alan Page , Mansoor Malik , Mark Swift , Niraj Khanchandani , TJ Singh , Aarthi Natarajan , Chandresh Jain , Bhargav Krishna , Sofian Hnaide , Matthias Knoll , Lawrence Cushman , Mark Longton Mark Peterson , Sid Uppal , Mark Molinaro , Steve Chang , Ewin Davis , Arunachalam Thenappan , Vikram Shankar , Ayman Aldahleh , Shea Meehan , Senthil Velayutham , Bora Cobanoglu Roman Sudarikov Eloy Durán Amit Apple , Sofiya Huts ???? , Vineet Taneja , Vani Soff , Michael W. Lam , Sharad Goel , Casey B. , Daniel Walsh , Kelly Rollin , Roman Sudarikov , Dan Zumwalt , Milan Burda , Sergii Mykhailov , Sean Keating , Armen Ayvazyan , Scott Colville , Mark Gollin , David Zukowski , Hugh Eland , Igor Zaika , Nic Surpatanu , Juraj Kapsiar , Paul Ray , Rish Tandon , Scott Van Vliet , Andrii Koliada , Annika Elias , Eric Sexauer , Michael Brasket , Michael Hill , Christian Schafleitner , Larry Jin , Mark Rubinstein , Charlotte Tang , Sumi Singh , Justin Slone , Miroslav Stastny , Amit Fulay , Anil Mehra , Mario Baricevic , Chintan P. , Jeremy Bowen , Gary Hildebrand , Devang Thakkar , Nic Surpatanu , Marc Pottier , Hari Krishna Reddy Juturu , Zac Walker , Enrique Urrieta , Mansoor Jafry , Sujeet Mehta , Alper Selcuk , DJ Park , Honza Kubát , Scott Van Vliet , Oleksandr Fediashov , Jind?ich Parus, Ph.D. , Matej ?uta , Ravindra Kumar Agrawal , Billy Landowski, Anton Kaliujin , Ali Niknafs Pallavi Bhalerao Pallavi Bhalerao Amit Apple Marat Abdullin Adam Samec Chris Sano , Chris Perez Adrian Potra , David Francis , Guru Chakravarthy Ranganathan , Yuri Dogandjiev , Markus Mielke , Mukundan Kidambi , Pavel Kruhlei , Vijaya Ramkumar , Mukul Singh , Blake Scott , thomas bouchard , Swati Jhawar , Scott Thurlow , Rama Juluri , Juan Rivera , Matt Martire , Aaratee Rao , Pankaj Luthra , Johanna Hawkins , Mark Peterson , Mario Blendea , Darya Kishylau , Gino Buzzelli , Adrienne Trudeau , David Sosby , Aparna Barve , Ketan L. , Jeff Yin , Martin Taillefer , Mark Gollin David Spizzirro , Tucker Burns , Alina Medintu , Mat S. Amit Sehgal , David Francis , Natallia Potash , Milena Natanov , Paola Mejía Minaya , Miri Scortzario , Annie Wang , Angela Chin , Catalin Andrei , Juraj Kapsiar , Drew A. .

You (and everyone I missed tagging above) are what have shaped and made my years at Microsoft, thank you so much for all the partnerships, lessons, fun, hard work and the amazing time we spent together.

Thank you!?

p.s. I will have missed mentioning so many amazing people, my memory, both short and long, is terrible, so please let me know, so I can fix it! :)