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.”
Continue reading →
Microsoft General Manager Megan Wallent
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.
Continue reading →
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
Steve Ballmer asked Miya McClain to intern at Microsoft when the two appeared at a technology event five years ago.
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.
Continue reading →
Jillian Venters
The geek in question: Jillian Venters aka “That Goth Girl.”
The job title: Technical Editor, Dev Div
What is it that you do here?
I edit help documentation for developers on the Dev Div team, and I’ve been an editor here at Microsoft as a contractor and then full time for about seven years now.
Continue reading →
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.
Continue reading →
Yay for the lolcat costume!
My favorite halloween costume
My favorite halloween costume
I’ve always wondered. And now the truth comes out!
Video: Israeli foodI grabbed this from Declan’s awesome blog all about International MSFT tech jobs:
So what do software engineers eat in Israel?
So for a bit of Friday fun check out Lisa, one of our SDEs in Israel, telling us a little about free food and in particular”diet” food that they all eat in the Haifa break room… :)
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.
Read the full article.
