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March 12, 2006

Career Planning

Microsoft is hip-deep in the "mid-year review process", which is the time of year when you sit down with your manager, look him or her in the eyes, and tell them what it is you want to be when you grow up. Sort of.

I've written before about Microsoft's management-by-objectives system, where you sign up for a series of deliverables by saying what you're going to do, how you're going to do it, and what success looks like when you get there. Once you establish your commitments, you're given a pretty free hand to manage your schedule and resources to make them happen.

Since formal annual reviews (aka, "raise and bonus season") are in the summer, the midpoint review is a way to check in with your manager, go over what you've delivered, and bring him or her up to speed on where things are with your in-process projects. From there, you can have a conversation about stuff that needs work, talk about areas of concern, or raise flags on anything that seems to be a problem. For your manager, the midyear is a vehicle to provide structured feedback about what's working (and what's not), and give you time to make any needed changes before the annual review.

The other, bigger, part of the mid-year review is to talk about your future career plans: aspirations, goals, desires, and so forth. People change jobs a lot inside of Microsoft, and talk openly about the "two to three year gig" on a given project, product or team. One of the things the company emphasizes is "finding your perfect work" - the particular combination of challenge and opportunity that will get you up in the morning. Obviously, this changes over time: you might start life as a Product Manager on XBox, and then move into Business Development over on Exchange. It's important to Microsoft that people make these moves inside the business, sticking with the company for the long term (because, you know, the alternative to that is that we all go work somewhere else). As a result, people tend to be pretty open about what their 3- or 5-year plan happens to be ... even if it's not sticking with their current gig.

I had my midyear about two weeks ago, and it went fine. (They're not telling me to pack up my office by 5 PM or anything.)

For me, though, the strangest part of the midyear concerned my future career aspirations. I've only been in the job, like, six months, right? And when I started here, my ambitions were all about becoming the best Planner I could - with only vague notions of what I might want to do later. The point, for me, was to marinate in the job, learn it, learn the company, and make a decision when the time seemed right.

Instead, I'm already finding myself charting out what I want to do in 2008 or so. Initially it felt ... disloyal, or something, to be talking about leaving Planning at this early date (I just got here!). And yet, as Jeff and I chatted about opportunities, paths for growth, and the like, I quickly realized just how big this place is in terms of opportunity.

For instance. I'm clearly very interested in Apple and Mac stuff, so I've been toying with the idea of going and working in the MacBU - probably in a development role. Office Planning, on the other hand, has an expanding set of opportunities - thornier problems, bigger impact - that seem to align well with my natural interests. And finally, being at a multinational means I could conceivably choose to live and work abroad, setting up shop in France, Japan, or the UK.

And these are just three possibilities.

Clearly, it's a lot of choice. I'm taking my time processing all of it, searching my interests to identify both what I'd like to do (MacBU? Planning?), the kind of work I'd be good at doing (Building products? Marketing them? Managing people?), and the areas I might look at as opportunities for personal growth (New countries? New markets? New products?).

I know this is a Big Question, but I know a lot of my fellow MBA classmates are wrestling with it, too (Cintra, for instance, just made a decision to stay in Boston). So, dear readers - what do you want to be when you grow up?

And: got any advice?

Posted by Gavin Shearer at March 12, 2006 8:18 PM. Posted to MSFT.

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