No dress code doesn't necessarily mean jeans and sandals with socks, people!
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.
Jeff Lin doesn't want a corporate mother
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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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.
Sara Ford in NYC
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.
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?
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Alex Turner wants to save your day
The geek in question: Alex Turner
The job title: Program Manager, C#
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Suzanne Hansen
The Geek in question:
Suzanne Hansen
The job title:
Program Manager, Non-Professional Tools
How did you get here?
Well, I was doing my master’s degree at University of Victoria, working on an open source project for Eclipse and other very non-Microsoft things. Some people from Microsoft Research came by campus to look at student projects, and mine was slightly different because I was looking at how novices learn how to program.
I’d applied once to intern at Microsoft and didn’t even get an interview, and I’d thought to myself, “Fine. So that’s how it’s going to be.” But apparently the Microsoft Research team remembered my student project a year later when John Montgomery (my manager) was forming the Non-Professional Tools team, and I was called in.
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God, I love it when Microsoft gets weird. WTF comedy is my favorite brand of ha-ha.
Video: A Cowboy meets a Microsoft Program Manager?
A Microsoft PM tracks her story from aspiring astronaut to apprentice to SDET to PM to UX student
Dana Badeen
The geek in question
Dana Badeen
The job title
Program Manager, Engineering Innovation (Windows Server)
So, Dana. What did you want to be when you grew up?
When I started college at the University of Michigan, I wanted to be an astronaut. After two years in the Aerospace program I realized that the chances of actually getting into the Astronaut program are worse than getting struck by lightning! And even if you get into the program, you only have a one-third chance of making it to space.
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In his spare time, a program manager builds an application that lets his family track his whereabouts over the Internet. The cell phone app showcases Microsoft technology.
By Laurie Rowell
What do you do in your spare time? Over a four-week span, Nagi Babu Punyamurthula built an application that turned his cell phone into a beacon that beams his location to an Internet map.
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“I can upload my GPS position to my server, and my family can go to the Web page map to see where I am,” said Punyamurthula.
Matching the clear simplicity of the concept, he named the application Where Am I. He envisions families using it to keep in touch with a parent or child or rescue workers using it to find lost or missing persons. Future iterations will turn phones into social networking devices and display nearby points of interest such as restaurants, gas stations, ATMs, and parks.
What started out as a hobby project quickly grew in scope, and now Punyamurthula hopes to make it a Windows Live service.
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