From Spaces to WordPress…

Well, I migrated my Spaces blog to WordPress, due to the fact that Spaces is shutting down. I’m not sure I’m a fan of this UI–it’s kind of confusing. Anyhow, WordPress was kind enough to move my posts and comments over as well–all 300+ comments, of which 99% are spam. Nice. Please re-subscribe to RSS feeds.

I haven’t blogged here in over a year and a half. Ouch.

Windows Live Essentials is now released, which includes Windows Live Mesh. Woot! And it’s going to be installed on Dell machines this fall!  It’s been a long journey.

Anniversary

As of today, August 16, 2006, I’ve been working at Microsoft as a full time employee for exactly two years. Two years! In two more weeks it’ll be four years since I first came to campus as an intern. I suppose that I can’t claim to be a new grad anymore even though it certainly still feels that way. I remember first starting out, and looking at people that had been here two years and saying, "Wow you’ve been here forever."

Certainly, a lot has changed since I first stepped foot on campus. I’m currently occupying my fifth office (yes, I’ve kept track) and will be in my sixth by the end of next week (and back to having my own office again).

What else?  Surprisingly not much.  I can quite accurately split my career into (almost) half year chunks:

1. Aug ’04 – Dec ’04 : ramp up on Messenger
2. Dec ’04 – Mar ’05 : backend support for Winks and DDPs (Dynamic Display Pictures)
3. Apr ’05 – Dec ’05 : leverage MSN Search manageability technology
4. Jan ’06 – Mar ’06 : burned out
5. Apr ’06 – Today : new team!

I worked on other stuff too, but those were the "major" milestones.

I believe people normally bring in bags of M&Ms to mark the occasion.  I’m just going to let it pass silently.

I think this upcoming third year should be most interesting.

Out with the Old, In with the New

at·tri·tion    ( P )  Pronunciation Key  (-trshn)
n.

1. A rubbing away or wearing down by friction.
2. A gradual diminution in number or strength because of constant stress.
3. A gradual, natural reduction in membership or personnel, as through retirement, resignation, or death.
4. Repentance for sin motivated by fear of punishment rather than by love of God.
   

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   [Middle English attricioun, regret, breaking, from Old French attrition, abrasion, from Late Latin attrti, attrtin-, act of rubbing against, from Latin attrtus, past participle of atterere, to rub against  : ad-, against; see ad- + terere, to rub; see ter-¹ in Indo-European Roots.]

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   at·trition·al adj.

Source: The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition
Copyright © 2000 by Houghton Mifflin Company.
Published by Houghton Mifflin Company. All rights reserved.

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Attrition

The reduction in staff and employees in a company through normal means, such as retirement and resignation. This is natural in any business and industry.

Investopedia Commentary

This type of reduction in staff is one way a company can decrease labor costs: the company simply waits for its employees to leave and freezes hiring. Such a method contrasts the more severe labor-reduction techniques, such as mass layoffs. Waiting for attrition is usually better for company morale.

Source: Investopedia.com. Copyright © 1999-2005 – All rights reserved. Owned and Operated by Investopedia Inc.

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[Attrition] is natural in any business and industry. But no matter how you think of it, attrition is not good for morale. No matter what the departing people say ("I wasn’t looking; something just came up…", which is akin to, "It’s not you, it’s me…"), something about the current state of events just didn’t measure up to the other opportunity for them. And this inevitably causes others to ask themselves, "Does he see something [that drove him away] that I don’t see?", "Are there better opportunities out there for me too?", "Am I stagnating?", "What am I doing?", etc.

Obviously, from a management perspective, you hate to see people leave (unless they’re underperforming). People that have ramped up on the product, understand how things work, are, to some extent, valuable. (Some are obviously more valuable than others.) Training new employees is not a particularly productive for the team as a whole. The investment had already been made and you were reaping the rewards.

One of the Messenger folk mentioned to me once that it was amazing how fast Messenger can grind you down. Most probably this is due to our relatively fast release cycles and constant barrage of fires to fight. This post wasn’t spurred by anything in particular–it was more a multitude of things: the several people that have left the team over the years, and others that are now taking that big step (I’ve seen people come and go); Dare’s post about leaving within 5 years; Mid-Year Reviews coming up; and so on.  A time for reflection…

I guess the good news is that We’re Hiring! Work on the MSN Runtime, the Messenger Edge Team, the Presence Platform, or the Bot Platform!

Thinking about 4:1

The ratio of annual revenue of the global advertising business to the global software business is 4:1.

Always Thinking: Who’s the real Force on the Web…?

I had no idea this Space existed until Danny mentioned something about a "seed" during the dev meeting today. I actually had no idea what he was talking about even though (I think) he was talking to me. Smile and nod. Smile and nod.

Afterwards, I had to go to Search for it, and had to go to somebody else‘s blog before I found the link. I think Search still has room for improvement (although it looks like a popular search engine couldn’t find it either.. but it did find this–very cool.)

Anyhow, even though the site seems to be very much a recruiting ploy, and not many people seem to read it (judging from the number of comments–although I shouldn’t talk), there are some interesting posts in there. Have a look.

Rockers and their Mohawks

We had our monthly Development Team meeting today. Our dev manager, Danny, asks the new hires every meeting some random question while they introduce themselves. Last month it was, "What’s your favourite RSS feed?", to which a ton of people were like, "What’s an RSS feed?" (To be fair, I didn’t start using RSS feeds until the introduction of Start.com.) Anyhow, today the question was, "What’s your favourite year of the twentieth century?" Not particularly interesting. I would have answered that it was the year I was born. But today he also directed a question at the interns that are leaving in the next month or so:

Danny:	"Who’s your favourite rocker in Rock Star:INXS?"
Intern:	"uhh I read the Rockstars’ Spaces once, and I guess I’ll say JD because he has a mohawk."
Me:	"No, that’s Ty."
Danny:	"BUSTED!!"

Naturally, Danny is quite a fan. I just watch it because it’s the only thing on and is semi-entertaining. (Although I do have a Rockstar Meego and I did vote this week.)