Yesterday was the 5th anniversary of me joining Microsoft as a full-time employee. Sure, I clocked up around 15 or 16 months as a contractor prior to taking a permanent position, but yesterday marked 5 years of having a blue pass.
Whilst I have worked in the same building for the whole time (in Soho in London) and with predominantly the same group of people, plenty of changes have occurred. Some random fun things off the top of my head:
- I am on my 4th manager, and my 3rd job title.
- I must have endured at least 5 or 6 team name changes, to align with re-orgs. Thinking about it, it's probably way more than that, given the propensity for re-orgs at Microsoft!
- I have had the pleasure of traveling to many places for work or conferences, including Seattle, San Jose, Minneapolis, Shanghai, Paris, Copenhagen, Vienna, Munich, Dublin and Reading(!).
- I have worked with teams responsible for developing and maintaining an old publishing platform, developing a new publishing platform, and developing and deploying many versions of the many MSN websites (from MSN6 through to today).
- I have 5 "Ship It" awards for products I have helped to ship.
"Tradition" says that I should provide a pound of M&Ms for every year I have been at Microsoft. I think this works better in environments where there a lots of people and ton of corridors - I am sure five pounds of M&Ms would go very quickly like that. However, our office is not set up that way, and I don't think the sweets would get eaten. I feel that a couple of boxes of Krispy Kreme doughnuts would probably be a welcome alternative.
Here's to the next five years.
