The geek in question: Matthew Baldwin

The job title: Programmer/Writer on the protocol documentation team.

So, what are you working on right now?
We have been creating technical specifications for the protocols used by Microsoft applications to communicate … okay, this is the moment where the eyes of the person who asked that question typically glaze over, so I’ve never actually come up with an ending for this sentence.

Is it awesome?
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The geek in question: Fola Adeleke-Adedoyin

The job title: Developer, MSIT Relationship Experience Division (RXD)

So what are you working on?
I’m a developer with MSSolve, the Microsoft Services business incident management solution, which is on track to replace a 12-year Clarify legacy system with a Microsoft technology stack such as WPF, WCF, MS CRM Dynamics 4.0 (titan), and much more.

Goodness. I see you like acronyms. How long have you been at Microsoft, Land of the Acronym (LotA)?
A year and a half — although I did a six-month internship before that.
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The geeks in question: Beatrice Billard & Natalie K. Parks

The job titles: Site Manager and Content Project Manager for Clip Art & Media Site (CAM), on Office Online

What kind of stuff are you two working on?
Beatrice: My job focuses on working with our engineering and business development teams to plan and implement Microsoft’s Clip Art & Media website features and partnerships with content providers.

Natalie: I manage the programming of the daily site, and acquire content. I’m involved with acquisition, where we purchase content … although we are moving away from that model. Beatrice is involved with attribution, where we obtain content for free, in exchange for attribution with our partners, and I am working more and more in that arena as well.

B: You’re more the designer’s eye, and I’m more the structure and the process.

N: She’s more technical than I am. But you’re an artist too!

B: But the lines are blurry.
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The geek in question: Amir Bahadori
The job title: UX Designer II

What are you working on right now?
My team works with Fortune 500 companies to create entertainment experiences that we promote on the MSN homepage. We just did a website for LeBron James from the Cleveland Cavaliers — it was this 3D book that opened up and had articles and content about his life.

Essentially every project is its own universe. We take from our services and create an experience that people can come in and play with and spend some time with the brand, so there’s a bit of brand lift.

Ha! You said “brand lift.”

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The geek in question: Jeff Sandquist

The job title: Senior Director, Platform Evangelism

How long have you been with the company?
I think it’s been about 12 years. I get a plaque every once and a while to remind me. I started as a contractor answering phones for Product Support Services.

So, if you’ve been here that long, you’ve gotten to witness Microsoft’s shift toward transparency — including your own “peer to peer over a beer” work with Channel 9. What are the limits of that transparency? How does it feel knowing management reads your blog?

When I first started here, I was terrified of the higher ups. They were almost like Santa Claus — these mythical figures running these billion dollar businesses. I used to be so scared of Sanjay that I would actually go down a different hallway rather than talk to him.

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The geek in question: Jonathan Biderman
The job title: Program Manager, Infopath

My, you’re looking snappy today. What’s up? Do you have a job interview or something?
Thanks! But why does anyone need a reason to dress up, down or sideways? Since Microsoft doesn’t have a dress code I could just as readily choose to wear holey jeans and sandals as I could a tuxedo (…one of these days…)

Interviewing may be a typically assumed reason for dressing up at Microsoft, but I just wanted to start wearing the nice clothes that otherwise would be gathering dust in my closet. I decided that if I wear my numerous ties, I won’t actually have too many. That, and it certainly amuses my team.

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Jeff Lin, guitarist for Seattle band Harvey Danger, talks about Virtual Earth 3D, work/life balance, and finding your destiny.

Geek in question: Jeff Lin
Job title: Program Manager, Virtual Earth 3D

What are you working on right now?
Virtual Earth 3D is all about realistic representation of the world. We’ve got a couple hundred cities with photo-realistic imagery and 3D geometry. You can add photos, make movies, do tours. It’s actually super cool. I think it’s one of the coolest things that Microsoft is doing.

Do you have to say that because you work on it?
Naw. I feel pretty lucky that I got this position. I just started in this group five months ago. I’d been over at MSN since 2005, and when I applied for this job, I was like, there’s no way. I think I just lucked out.
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The geek in question: Alex MacLeod
The job: Senior Test Manager, Exchange

Do you feel like the Exchange team gets no love? Like people see it as less sexy than, say, Xbox?
Totally. When people apply at Microsoft, they get this boilerplate form where they check their interest in different groups. And the only two check boxes I’ve ever seen marked are Games or Mobile Devices. And occasionally someone who thinks they’re a hardcore computer candidate will check OS, but no one ever chooses the Enterprise applications like Exchange. No one knows what it means and it doesn’t sound cool.

But see, I work on a product that for millions of people and millions of businesses across the globe, isn’t a “nice to have” feature. It’s a complete “must have.” There’s not a company in the world that doesn’t view their ability to communicate effectively with each other through email as total mission critical. And when it doesn’t work whole economies suffer. Continue reading →

Last week I attended BlogHer Business in New York City, and appeared on a panel alongside two other Microsoft bloggers, Ani Babaian and Sara Ford. Sara let me pepper her with questions for a couple minutes about the work she’s doing with CodePlex, Microsoft’s open source project hosting site.

The Geek in question: Sara Ford
The job title: Program Manager, CodePlex.com

Obviously, open source + Microsoft = touchy subject with a lot of history. I’m curious how you approach that. Do you put on your special
kid gloves before work every day?
We want to create a site that provides a great user experience for open source development on the Microsoft platform. We want people to be able to collaborate in an online world by giving them project management tools and a source code repository. And, they can track bugs, features, and have discussion boards — all the things that you need for an open, collaborative environment.

When I’m engaging with the open source community, I say, “Hey, I was hired at Microsoft straight out of college — I’ve only seen how proprietary software is built, so I’m curious about how open source projects work. Come and show me how it works.”

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Dare is just your average program manager, popular Microsoft blogger, son-of-the-former-Nigerian-president. When he recently bailed on his very popular blog, I had to follow up with him on the details.

We’ll start with the easy question: how long have you been here and what are you working on right now?
I’ve been with Microsoft for six years, and right now I’m a PM on the contacts platform. Recently I worked on the initial platform for events.live.com, and then I worked on the What’s New page on Spaces, which shows you what your friends have been doing on Spaces.

When I interviewed Mini-Microsoft a couple months ago, I asked him about his favorite MSFT bloggers, and he mentioned you. And then two weeks later, you quit blogging! What’s up with that?

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