Reflections on my first year at Microsoft

This month (specifically 9th November 2021) marked my first-year anniversary working at Microsoft. I thought I’d write down some thoughts, observations, and take a retrospective look at what a huge personal decision it was for me at the time. I also want to provide my insights into what it's like working for one of the top tier technology companies on the planet.

Wait what? I work at Microsoft!?

A year on and I still don’t think it has fully sunk in that I have a @microsoft.com email address as an FTE employee.?Changing employers in the middle of a pandemic was a big decision that I had to think long and hard about. Working for Microsoft was one of those ideas that was always in the back of my mind, ever since I was a teenager unpacking the floppy discs of DOS 6.2 from the plastic shrink wrapped user manual. It was one of those far off distant dreams that you just never think would become a reality,?like when a child says they want to be an astronaut. Sure, some kids make it, but let’s face it…most don’t, and it becomes a throw away idea.?

I never thought I would work for Microsoft.?I saw the people who worked there, and I never thought I was as good as they were.?Then one day after 4 rounds of interviews over several weeks….?I had an offer sitting in my inbox. That was when I knew I had a huge decision to make.?

People leave their employers for various reasons, but this was the first time I had to think about leaving a place I loved working at. Can you imagine that? You have two great managers, you love your job, you love the organisation you work for, you get on great with everyone you work with. Why would any sane person want to leave that perfect combination?

….and then there’s the memory of that idea in the back of your head you thought had long gone away. Is this it? Is this the opportunity you never thought you’d get? I was reminded of the 1920 poem “The Road Not Taken” by Robert Frost.

Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,

And sorry I could not travel both

And be one traveler, long I stood

And looked down one as far as I could

To where it bent in the undergrowth;

etc. etc. Full poem here: The Road Not Taken by Robert Frost | Poetry Foundation

In the end I made the decision to take the road less travelled and got that blue badge.

Great managers got me to where I am

I doubt I would be at Microsoft today had it not been for several influential managers throughout my career. The first was a project manager at Telstra named Geoff Irwin. He gave me my first opportunity to work in the IT industry having freshly graduated from my Diploma of Information Technology. The race to fix the Y2K bug and the dotcom boom fueled the energy driving the technology sector in the late 90’s and Geoff helped start my career.?

Next I want to mention Chris Dury and Peter Jarrett who both assisted me during my time at Avanade.?This is where I made the transition from working in operations to being a consultant in front of the customer. Both Chris and Peter enabled that opportunity in my career to pivot and work with large organisations on consulting engagements.

In 2008 I started at Data#3. Let me just say you can’t work at a place for 12 years and not leave some part of yourself behind.?Data#3 is where the likes of Phil Redmond, Shaun Duncan, and Martin Sinclair afforded me every opportunity to grow, make mistakes, learn and come back better. It was with their guidance and mentoring from Justin Cook and Jeff Cook (they’re not related) over 12yrs that I developed the skills and fine tuned the craft of being a consultant – it’s where I got the knowledge and learnt how to use the tools for what I needed to do.

So it is with these great managers who lifted me up and pushed me forward to take that next step, I give my sincere gratitude and thanks.

So what’s it like at Microsoft?

“Drinking from a fire hose” – that is literally something you will hear everyone say to new starters, and it’s 100% spot on.?It is exactly like that.?The first few weeks can feel overwhelming.?There is SO MUCH INFORMATION to absorb.?The first 3 months of my role was just learning. Onboarding training, role-based training, getting access to systems, mandatory compliance training, finding out which distribution lists and Teams I needed to be in etc. etc. etc.?It is an avalanche of information that you’re trying to catch in a bucket.

Once the dust settled and I started getting into my role, and that’s when I began noticing things.

1.??????Meeting your heros: All the well-known people you followed from the outside… the cloud advocates, the technical evangelists, the senior program managers, the people you see who write the blog posts, the people who present at the conferences, the people who ran your training courses…?they are all here.?You see their names in teams meetings, emails, they join calls with you, you’re on the same team as them. Imagine if you made some low budget indie film but it was nominated for an Academy Award and you were invited to the red carpet…?it feels just like that and it’s amazing. ?Which leads me to my next point…

2.??????Imposter Syndrome:?I’ve seen other people talk about it, and I never really understood it until I started working at Microsoft.?And by understanding it – I mean…felt it.?It’s a real thing. ?Working amongst the calibre of people in my team and across the organisation I can’t help but feel out of place, like I’m just waiting to be “found out”. Any minute someone will say “How did he get a job here? Who hired him?” ?For me it literally is because I know how well respected these people are in the IT community, and I don’t want to disappoint them.

3.??????Growth mindset and empathy: Everyone here lives and breaths it. If you’ve read the book “Hit Refresh ” by Satya Nadella, that is no joke. The culture in Microsoft now is a CTRL-C, CTRL-V of the concepts in that book. Working in Microsoft and experiencing the culture is a fundamental shift from anywhere else I’ve worked before. And because this is something everyone continuously works towards – you get a sense of how it is a fabric of how everyone operates; how communications occur, the tone of emails, the asks, the flexibility of work – and it’s very positive to experience.

4.??????Diversity, Inclusion and Accessibility: I like how much emphasis and commitment there is on this at Microsoft. In the year that I’ve been here I have learned so much about why D&I and making our products accessible is so important. Diverse perspectives and inclusive thinking drive innovation and building in accessibility makes our products usable by everyone.

5.??????Helping people and organisations achieve more: This was the primary reason I wanted to join Microsoft. I’ve always been passionate about their products and I saw this as an opportunity where I could really make an impact.?In my role and in my team there really is a sense of making a difference.?Being on this side of the fence – it isn’t about delivering a project on time and on budget, or just hitting that SLA or KPI.?It really is about making a difference and helping people use our products to their full capability so THEY can achieve more.

Is there a downside to working at Microsoft?

I want to be honest here. It depends on what your measure of a downside is. Here are a couple of things I’m not fond of.

1.??????Information overload: There is so much information to absorb every day.?Before I worked at Microsoft I remember there would be times when I would email someone at the company, and I wouldn’t get a reply for days or sometimes weeks later.?It used to make me think I wasn’t important.?Then when I joined Microsoft I promised myself I would respond to all emails as soon as conveniently possible, and I would not be “that person” who took days/weeks to reply.??Let me tell you it’s hard to stay on top of emails.?I can now see why it took days to respond.?There is so much information coming into my inbox – emails from customers & colleagues needing my help, product updates, outage information, internal awareness, meeting requests, the list goes on.?On top of this there’s the other streams of communication such as Teams chat and channel posts to stay across.?All of this is mixed up with the ad-hoc impromptu “Have you got a sec for a quick call?” distractions.??

I’m not going to lie…it’s challenging to stay on top of it to say the least.?I would like to think I’m doing an ok job of staying true to my self-commitment, but I know there is the occasional response or task that slips through the net.

2.??????Meeting Fatigue: In my role I have a lot of meetings and finding the energy to be on back to back meetings all day, for almost all week is a challenge.?Having meetings all day also makes it hard to do the actual work. I need to get better at having less meetings, and I still need to figure out how to do this.

3.??????Time Management: This is related to point 2 above.?Because I find myself on meetings all day, I’m putting in quite a bit of personal time to get my work done. This is because I am poor at time management. The focus time I get during the day I spend decompressing from the previous meeting while trying to source the energy for the next meeting.?I’m not really one of those people that can roll from one interaction to the next. I need that space between meetings to reset.?So for me it’s the quiet hours of the evening where I can really focus on work and think about my customers without the distraction of having to get psyched up for the next meeting.

For me theses are the “downsides” – but this is anchored by flexibility and two managers who let me work the way I want to work.?Some people may scoff at working in their personal time, but I honestly don’t mind because I enjoy the work I do.?Put it this way – I’m not stupid enough to burn my personal time doing something I don't enjoy.

In my first 12 months at Microsoft the good has most definitely outweighed the “bad”.?I feel extremely lucky to be surrounded by the people I work with and I learn from them every day.?I never knew the “old Microsoft” but I’m really liking this “new Microsoft” and the culture that is lived by everyone here. I won the lotto with getting 2 more great managers in this new role, and like most people who changed employers during the pandemic, I haven’t met either of them in person yet.?Hopefully that’ll change in the not-too-distant future.

Looking back on the past 12 months I think one of the keys to making it in such an organisation is to be comfortable with being uncomfortable. And by that I mean by being agreeable to constant change, learning, and handling the unfamiliar.