Talking about transparency, transgender health care coverage, and ushering out the era of table-pounding Microsoft managers with General Manager Megan Wallent, formerly known as Michael Wallent.

What are you working on right now?
Right now I’m the general manager of an unnamed group.

…Ha! Pure Microsoft!
My group is the conglomeration of a bunch of different things including Power Shell, Server Management UI, the over-all Server UI models, plus a bunch of other infrastructure pieces, plus Softgrid. So, we don’t really have an all-up name for it, but the pseudo-name is WinMan.

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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.
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It took a proposal from Steve Ballmer to entice a promising computer science student to consider a career at Microsoft. Now she’d like to see more women and minorities follow her lead.

By Fred Albert

March 3, 2008

Miya McClain was 18 years old when Steve Ballmer made her an offer she couldn’t refuse.The college freshman was at a Seattle hotel demonstrating an internship project for a gathering of high-tech executives when Ballmer stepped up to the dais. After delivering his keynote address, he stood before the crowd and offered McClain an internship at Microsoft.

“I wasn’t going to apply for the Microsoft college internship,” confided McClain, now 24 and a software design engineer in test for Office. “I was just going to intern at other, smaller companies like I had in high school.” But when the CEO of Microsoft offers you a position in front of a room full of industry hotshots, how can you say no? Representatives from other companies swooped in to counter Ballmer’s offer, but it was too late. The die was cast.

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From Valleywag: Michael Wallent, a general manager at Microsoft, will return to work in January as Megan Wallent.

While this news is interesting in a “huh, that doesn’t happen every day” sort of way, the blog post touches on broader issues about gender and Microsoft: This is a company that as of late last year counted only 100 women among its top 900 executives — those Wallent’s rank and higher. In becoming Megan, he’ll only improve that ratio by 0.1 percent.

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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.
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