Microsoft after 3 weeks :)

Hii Guys,


This is a post which came into my mind to post it while I was talking to my friend when we were discussing his post about his company, but for the first time in my blog, I don’t advice anyone who’s not happy with his current job to read it, as probably it will not help him except by making him either curse me or hate himself more.

Any way, what’s this post all about?

It’s about Microsoft, although I’ve post a previous post on Microsoft before, but all the information inside it was available on the web on their site, in other words there’s nothing I’ve tried by myself when I posted it.

This post will talk about my experience here in Microsoft after 3 weeks; also it will contain all the information needed to finish the “The Journey to USA” episodes.

Now in addition for what I’ve mentioned in my previous post (which by the way is the exact things that I found here), let’s talk about Microsoft from my personal point of view, first before jumping into details, I just need to mention something:

This is a company which anyone could make anything whatever its cost to make it better, I could think about it as my second home now and the place I could do anything in-order to help it be the best.


Why I said this?!

Again before jumping into the details, I could summarize how Microsoft is treating its own employee in only one paragraph and then discuss the points I’ve met till now.

In short, imagine some guy and his wife whom are being married for more than 15 years and they did everything in-order to get a baby but in vain, and suddenly the miracle happened and they god a child, now if you could imagine how they will treat him, then you’ve got an initial idea of how Microsoft is treating us.
Before you continue reading these points, please read this previous post at first.

Now let's take it point by point:

1. Starting from the first day here, the amount of care is amazing, could you imagine that they have a big team here which only mission is to help us getting started?!
   No, I don't mean getting started in paper work (like SSN or Driving license or such things), nor renting/buying a home or car, no, I don't talk about such things, I talk about getting started on MS itself, know about MS culture, know more people, know about optional training and meetings, things like that, this team will be connected to every new employee for about 6 months till he/she started well with MS, not only this, also another team for new graduates like me, which will stay with us for about one year, making us get started on places here, holding events, making a good network between every new graduate, etc.
2. There's no Egyptian kind of work load, and I mean by Egyptian kind of work load those Hany has mentioned in his post, which simply means that they accept weird delivery dates and force the developers to work at least 12-15 hours x 7 to finish it, no here as far as I've seen till now personally and from people's discussion that even in shipment period, the work is around 45-50 hours per week, and in normal it's 40-45 hours, also if in shipment time, you've worked only the 40-45 hours/week, no one will kill you, but if you worked more, every additional hour over the 40 hours is 1.5X normal hour, not only this, but also you got bonus, and thanks certificate and good degrees in your evaluation form.
3. Work here is task based not time based, which simply means that the Egyptian way of you must come X hours per day is not the case here, here you come whenever you want, leave whenever you want and work wherever you want to the number of hours you like, no one will ask you to come in any time or leave in any specific time except when you've a meeting or something like that, otherwise you just have a deadline for your task to deliver and you're free to finish it in the way you want, and by the way I know that many people will say: "Yes, but this deadline may force you to work 24 hours per day", no this is not the case, it's normal deadline, not super un-expectable deadlines.
4. No upper orders of "Must" type, any thing here is of "Should" and "May" type, which means that every one including those whom are here from just about 10 min., can say his/her opinion about anything, technical or structure based, and if he's reasonable, his comments would be appreciated well, as example, if someone has joined product X from about 1 day only, and he saw that the next version will contain feature A, B and C, he could hold a meeting and tell people that feature B is not good and they need to replace it with feature D which will be better, and they don't end the meeting except after all members got convinced with the better solution and features set, no way that you could say your opinion here and they told you something like: "Ohhhhhh, you can't say your opinion, these features have been set and revised from people having much experience than you, you must be in the same experience first", this kind of answer is well known in Egyptians culture of doing Management, tell me a name of a company in Egypt which you can send an email to the CEO telling him your opinion about some sort of stuff and he accepts it if you're reasonable?
5. No one will kill you here if you got anything to do during your task period which gonna delay you from its deadline, and I don't mean that kind of things like being in the hospital between life and death or such very urgent stuff, I mean any other normal/slightly over normal has happened.
6. The weird Egyptians way of that developer must hate his manager and this is the only case for this manager to be good is not the case here at all, here managers and really greattttttt, if you came here, you couldn't ever differentiate between a VP for any big product and normal developer, they talk in the same way, dealing with you in the same way, no way that because person X is a big manager to talk with you with a way like as you're a kid or servant, I'll give you a simple example, in my first day, I got my direct manager name/office number wrong, so I went to someone and knocked his door and said: "Hii, they told me that you're my direct manager", he looked at me and was very surprised, then he asked me to take a seat and started talking with me about life and my experience in MS too far, and things like that, and then he picked the phone and started talking to many people trying to figure out who's my manager till he found him, and know what?
   This guy whom I went to his office was Paul Flessner, Senior Vice President, Server Applications, a guy with a very very big position in Microsoft, and he didn't make me feel that he's that big at all, he was dealing with me in a very friendly way, and I didn't notice about his position until I talked to people here about what happened.
7. Again, management here is great, my manager here as example, he hasn't ever ordered me with anything, every task I get here is done through the way of asking my opinion about doing it, even in the first week, he has had a meeting with me discussing my job roles and at the end he asked me whether I'd like to work in this position or not, do you imagine this!!!!
   Even if I don't like it (although it's not true), I can't say this, because of the really amazing way he's dealing with me.
   Also when he gives me anything to do, it's done in a very rare kind of friendly behaviors, even if he wanna give me a new task and found me talking with someone in non-job related stuff, or doing something, he just leave and come back when I finish!!!!
   In Egypt it's is the same with only one different, this is done from any Employee toward his manager, not the inverse case like here.
   
8. People, you can't ever imagine how they are smart, kind, great, helpful and amazing, during my first and second week (and actually till now), every day I have someone in my office greeting me and talking with me about myself and then asking me if I need any help and offer me to go to him/her directly in case I need anything, and they are not only developers, managers too, have you seen this ever?!!
   Managers (and big manager), not only from my team, but from all other teams, passing by a new hire office and asking him if he needs anything?!!!
   It's really amazing!!!
   
9. Trust, from the first day Iam trusted on really very very expensive and important/critical stuff, I got the whole SQL Server Engine code on my machine, and I've read/write access to both current and future version of SQL Server, I could even take it on my laptop (if there's enough space to hold this huge code), and take it home or any other place with me.
   Also have access to a very big lap which contains multi-million dollars machines.
   They really trusting employees here to be a part from the company, as they are not just employees, no, they are treating us as we're the company and we're the company's assets.
   
10. No way to be asked that if you gonna take a course or two to come and work your 8 hours per day after you finish, no, courses here are calculated from your working time, you could even spend a month or two taking courses only, not only this, also if you thought about taking a master degree or PhD, it's calculated from your working hours too, only this?!!
    Nooooooooo, also if your additional degree is related to your job my any mean, they pay about 60% from your expenses in this degree, can you imagine this?!!!
    Can you tell me the name of any other company which is doing all these?!!!

Really if I talked days and days it's not enough to give them what they deserve, this is a company which any one could make anything whatever it is to help make it better, and this is a company I LOVE SO MUCH.

That's why you won't found any Microsoft Employee who doesn't love Microsoft as much as you could ever imagine :)