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July 14, 2004

Microsoft: Month One

As of tomorrow, I've been at Microsoft for one month.

My original intent this summer was to blog the "Microsoft experience" - the whole process of stepping in to the culture, meeting the people, and so on. Ideally, I would have been able to provide the fresh perspective of a newcomer, and been able to give some good insights into how this place runs.

As it happens, what I've found since coming here is that it takes time inside Microsoft to even be able to talk coherently about Microsoft. There's too much baggage when you come here -- perceptions about what's expected of you, or what projects are going on -- to be able to really see how things are working.

Let me give you an example.

It's no great secret that I've been a lifelong Mac guy, and that many of my best friends think of Microsoft, quite literally, as the Evil Empire. (Sidebar: when Dave Bodmer and I were driving to Microsoft in February for our internship interviews, we played John Williams' "Imperial March" on his car stereo ... followed by Madonna's "Ray of Light.") So a part of me was looking around corners for the first few weeks, watching for a glimpse of the World Domination Room -- you know, the one that looks like the place SPECTRE meets in the '60s Bond films. High-backed chairs? Huge, wall-sized televisions? Big map of the world? People calling the bald guy "Fearless leader"?

The room doesn't exist. OF COURSE it doesn't exist. But it's one of those things you halfway EXPECT to exist because the public persona of this place is so tortured.

It takes time to get these latent expectations out of the system, and I've been steadily losing them.

I think I'm finally ready to write.

Posted by Gavin Shearer at July 14, 2004 8:41 AM. Posted to MSFT.

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