10 Years at Microsoft

It’s the 20th July 2008 and today I have been working at Microsoft for ten years! I thought I’d share one useless fact for each of the years I’ve devoted to Microsoft. 1 million emails - Last year I worked out I had received 100,000 emails that year, an average of one every 37 seconds in a very theoretical working day. Things have changed over the years but I don’t think the volume has really changed that much, so it’s safe to say I’ve probably received\sent 1 millions emails since I joined! 2 hundred and 30 Flights – I’ve flown roughly 230 times for Microsoft, including 42 flights across the Atlantic. This also shows that I’ve been tracking 10 years of my life in Outlook. 3 dollar drop in share price! I joined when the stock price was booming, $28.453 and climbing. The year after I joined my options were enough to pay off my mortgage (which I only had had for a month)/ When they had finally vested I had enough to buy a 40’ LCD TV….. As I write this, the price is $25.86! When I joined I definitely hoped to be considerably better off but I can’t complain about what life has brought me. 4 news worthy projects – One of the things that has kept me at Microsoft is the opportunity to work on projects\products that my family and friends learn about in the news.

The one I remember the most was the launch of Intelligent Finance (if.com), I remember this really clearly because I read about the problems I was going to fix in the Times newspaper, whilst sitting on the plane flying to Leeds.
Then there was the Common Wealth Games, a fantastic 3 months project which put me in the hot room for the whole of the games, waiting for something bad to happen. Nothing did, except for some flooding in a server room (aka port-a-cabin) but even that didn’t break the fault tolerance we’d put in place!
I then finished off New Tax Credits, which received lots of press as one of the first high profile Digital Britain projects.
Finally BT Vision & Microsoft TV are still fresh in my mind, I don’t think many people can claim they were responsible for the architecture of a national TV platform.

5 thousand meetings – Accordingly to Outlook I have had 5,179 meetings! That’s roughly two a day, which now days would have been a very quiet day! 6 different jobs – Initial Response Engineer, Customer Support Engineer, Dedicated Supportability Engineer, Solutions Architect, Lead Program Manager and now a Senior Program Manager, Lead. 7 Promotions… 8 Different Managers – I think this is a record for someone in Microsoft! Most people have a change of manager at least once a year. I had one manager for 3 and 1/2 years, with a brief one month gap in the middle whilst I changed group and then he joined it! Surprisingly I can’t really say that I have had any really bad managers, but I can definitely say I had some great managers. 9 different desks\offices – I started on the 1st floor of Building 1 in Thames Valley Park, it took me 7 years to leave for Building 2, before quickly coming back to Building 1 for the BT Vision project. Since moving to Silicon Valley I’ve had different 3 offices, fortunately my tenure means I get an window, I couldn’t cope with out natural light! 10 Different Countries – I’ve worked or done training in 10 different countries; Switzerland, Italy, Holland, Spain, Hungary, France, Germany, Sweden, United Kingdom and the United States


Then	Now

So that’s it, here’s to another 3 years, which is how long I thought I’d be staying at Microsoft when I joined, who knows if that’ll turn into 20 years!!!!