Alex Turner wants to save your day

The geek in question: Alex Turner

The job title: Program Manager, C#

How did you end up at Microsoft?

I got my start as an intern with the Visual C# team in 2005, and then came back the next summer as an intern again. After getting my five year Bachelor’s/Master’s from Stony Brook University, I was hired back on the Visual C# team. I’m now the C# Compiler Program Manager.

Nice! So what do you do now?

I’m in charge of making sure the Compiler ship stays the course — that design gets done the right way and that milestones are accomplished at the right time. The C# Compiler has a lot of dependencies — a lot of other teams count on us, so it’s important to manage all those intergroup relationships well.

And I hear you’ve worked with Anders Hejlsberg, the international superhero of C#.

It was really a rock star experience for me. I remember when C# was still in a 1.0 beta, and I was trying it out, and I thought, this is really awesome. I remember trying to learn C++ in high school and I was picking up the concepts, but I still found it a lot to trudge through to do just simple things. And C# lets simple things be simple.

So, I was really excited to get an internship on the C# team. When I started my internship, I introduced myself to Anders and probably said something awkward.

How did an awkward hello eventually become Anders handing you $200?

We were preparing the first preview of the LINQ project — what became Language Integrated Query in C# 3.0/Visual Studio 2008. It was secret at the time, which was cool, getting to see it and play with it before anyone else.

I got to work with Anders to do the samples for that product. I was responsible for the 101 Query Samples, which provided a whole bunch of sample query methods you could use to try out LINQ and see how it worked. Anders felt passionately about getting the samples done, and we were on a tight schedule, so half as a joke he offered me a dollar per query.

It was fun: I put in the hours and ultimately got 101 LINQ to Objects queries done, as well as 101 LINQ to SQL queries done over the course of a couple weeks.

So, I ended up at the LINQ design meeting, and Anders asks, “How many queries do we have?” I told him I’d done the 202 queries, and he pulled out his wallet and handed me $202 dollars.

Was it all in ones?

Ha! No. I didn’t really expect him to follow through — but there he was, handing me the money! Everyone in the meeting was staring and smiling and I didn’t know what to do. So I just reached across the table and grabbed the money, and the room erupted in laughter. It was a surreal experience.

What did you do with the money? Insane things that can’t be spoken of on the internet?

Not really. I took some of my fellow interns out for dinner.

Scandalous!

Now that I’m back on the team as the Compiler PM, I work with Anders regularly — and it’s interesting to get used to that. Seeing secret betas, interacting with super-smart people. It’s weird when these kinds of things just become a part of your day-to-day life.

Linkee love, s’il vous plait?

• Anders on Channel 9
• The LINQ Project
• Alex’s 101 LINQ to Objects queries