The people.

A pretty broad statement, but it couldn't be more true. I think part 4 will probably evolve into at least a 4.1 and maybe a 4.2 in the future because this topic is so broad. For 4.0 I'll focus on the Microsoft bloggers I have been in touch with, in fact you've probably heard of a few of them...

• Eric Gunnerson agreed to meet me for lunch one day to discuss my move from an SE to an SDE and share his thoughts/advice.
• Omar Shahine has helped me with excessive spam in my Live Mail (aka: Hotmail) account.
• Mike Torres was willing to post about Inès' cool tool that publishes your NewsGator OPML in a prettified list.
• Heather Hamilton gave me some great advice for dealing with the press (can you believe my college actually asked me for an interview).
• Gretchen Ledgard, of JobSyntax (& formerly Microsoft's JobsBlog), took the time to explain some basic 'recruiting at Microsoft' concepts to me.
• Robert Scoble has shown appreciation for a few topically humorous emails I've shared with him.
• Alex Boyko was kind enough to meet with me for lunch and discuss his Blog Content Transfer tool.
• Dan Friedman and I have had some spirited email conversations about developing a tool to import content into Spaces (sidenote: I just found out he's the guy who bought the very first Xbox 360 sold at retail from Bill Gates!).

So why have these people (and others like them) made me enjoy working at Microsoft? Because they have all been extremely nice and exceptionally helpful when I called on them for assistance, advice or information. I contacted most of these people through their blog (I think Dan is the only exception) with questions specific to their expertise. Each and every one of them was very responsive and helpful. I won't go into any more specifics than above, but suffice it to say that I'm happy/proud to know that I work at the same company as people of this caliber.

Previous "Things I like about working @ MSFT" posts: 1, 2, 3, 3.1

~tod

tags: microsoft work+at+microsoft