In this post, I want to talk a little bit about my path at Microsoft.
After I finished college in 2007, one of my main goal was to work in a giant company. I have applied to Google and Microsoft. Google never answered, and Microsoft thought I didn’t have enough experience in what I was applying. Since I did an internship at Microsoft during the summer of 2007, I contacted my initial team and they were really happy to take me back.
AdCenter
I spent 3 years in adCenter, I definitely learned a lot of tricks on how Microsoft internal works. It takes a long time to get a project started and deployed. A lot of paperwork. This is definitely a big discovery for a college hire; however, I was still satisfied with my work and salary so I decided to stay. I was working on an internal website that was used by partners to publish ads on sites such as MSN.com, or other Microsoft property.
ASP.Net MVC
I didn’t find my promotion velocity to be fast enough at adCenter. I moved to ASP.net MVC; they were looking for a webmaster to give them insight on their framework. I learned so much how a rigorous code could be. I became really detailed oriented after spending 1 year in that team. I still remember when I fixed an HTML5 bug: I modified one line, then 3 testers jumped in my office asking why I was doing this and if it was required. Quality was extremely important and I really valued it.
Azure
Internal reorganization happened in that team and I got moved to Windows Azure (Microsoft Azure) Website. The project was just starting, it was definitely a mess. The team got formed from many people from different background; everybody had their opinion, but not that many people were web developers. We did however ship an awesome product that millions of users are using every day.
Then, we focused to work on a more scalable, robust, and prettier version of the website. I ended up in a team which creates re-usable controls (buttons, fancy combo box, grid, etc.) I have worked closely with my team members by teaching them the basic of webs, convention, quality, Git, etc. The people I worked with on a daily basis were amazing! They learned so quickly, we created an amazing set of controls.
I spent almost 3 years in that team; I became a key member for the team by answering questions, coming up with conventions, creating good design for a website made from scratch, etc. I really enjoyed it, however I always felt I had to push my opinion ten times stronger than being in a small company. This definitely improved my communication skills.
New beginning
Today, I decided to give a shot to something different. I’m going to try a consulting business. I did some consulting when I was in college, but I didn’t have the knowledge I have today. I still have a lot of missing pieces to start a business, but people at work helped me out with some contacts, tips and tricks, work template, etc.
I am excited to start this new adventure; not to mention, I will work mostly from home or in some coffee shops around the house: this will save me 2 to 3 hours of commute every day.
I am perseverant and will do my best to make this business successful.
Web Architect Consultant - Passionate about web projects! Expert in barcodes, automation, and JavaScript