Fola has a wingspan of over six feet
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.
Continue reading →
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.
Dare Obasanjo and his officemates
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?
Continue reading →
Hoop has excellent taste in music
I first met Zune developer Hoop Somuah last summer, after a colleague on the Zune team suggested that he might make a good profile for the ViewMyWorld website. We covered all sorts of topics in his profile, including the ways that the small team felt like a start-up, and the ruffled feathered from a coding retreat that some regarded as a coup. More than six months (and a Zune release) later, I thought I’d catch up with Hoop again to see how things were going.
Hey, Hoop. So, what’s changed since we spoke last summer?
Last year was all about building the base for the Zune service. This year, we’re working on building cool stuff on top of that infrastructure. Last year we were much more hard pressed for schedule, trying to make the release date for Zune 2.0.
Summer and early fall of 2007 I worked harder than I have ever worked in my life — harder than college, even harder than when I had two jobs simultaneously.
Continue reading →
Five times Fola Adeleke-Adedoyin interviewed for an internship. He finally got it, and ultimately, his blue badge.
By Brian Donohue
Growing up in Nigeria, Fola Adeleke-Adedoyin didn’t even see the Internet or a Microsoft product until he was 15. Once he did, he knew he wanted to pursue a technology career. He had no idea, though, how much pursuit it would entail.
A middle-class background, solid academic skills, and competitive swimming talent gave him the opportunity to attend Howard University in Washington, D.C. Fola worked on a four-year degree in systems and computer science. Each year, Microsoft visited the historically black campus to interview for internships and full-time positions. Each year Fola showed up, hopeful, but left empty-handed.
Others might have given up, but Fola didn’t. Now he sits in a Sammamish, Washington, office, wearing a blue Microsoft badge and a well-earned smile about his application developer job.
Continue reading →
