The Big Kahuna

Yesterday afternoon was the Microsoft Intern/New Grad tech fair out on one of the soccer fields on campus. Basically, they gave us a free tshirt, put out some food and had an intra-Microsoft job fair. The main event, though, was a keynote speech and Q & A session with Steve Ballmer. I have to say, I was impressed. I guess you don't get to be CEO of the largest software company in the world for being a dummy. He gave a rather informal talk on the company for about 15 minutes and then opened the floor for questions. Mr. Ballmer ... *ahem* ... Steve insisted that we call him "Steve." Anyone who referred to him as "Mr. Ballmer" or "sir" got an earful. He said it made him feel even older. After the first 3 or 4 questions, people caught on and started using his first name. He got questions from across the board, a number relating to the new "Zune" release, some about Mac compatibility, some about Google in various respects, and some cheesey "What advice do you have for us as ____" and such. He answered all of them well and with a clear grasp on the bigger picture of the company as a whole, the insdustry, and all stakeholders. I guess it's only natural that the guy in charge of all this stuff would have that kind of scope on things, but you don't really think about it when you spend all your time down here in the trenches. Anyway, I walked away from the talk thinking "OK, Bill can go give his money away, I can work for this guy."

Company Picnic

This weekend was the annual Microsoft Company Picnic. Of course, the company is so huge that employees are asked to sign up for one of the two weekend days to attend. I went on Saturday with Anna.

There was a whole lot of stuff there, including pony rides, massages with lines that were way too long, carnival games, a volleyball tournament, R/C car racing, fortune tellers, a fake tattoo booth, magicians, musical performers, a puzzle hunt, and of course a lot of food. One of the tents there had a bunch of cool birds, including a live Bald Eagle. We spent the majority of our time doing the puzzle hunt, since many of the activities were either kid-centered, not very good for our attire, or just kinda gross (think lots of sweaty people getting massages outside in 90 degree weather.) The hunt was fun though. And we enjoyed our share of the food as well.

Among the musical performers they had there that day was an all male a cappella group called the Baudboys made up entirely of Microsoft employees. We watched them for a while. They sang a few songs I'd heard before, including Title of the Song, which they seemed to imply was an original by them (I guess maybe you have to play it up like that to pull that song off.) They did a few others I hadn't heard too. I made sure to go chat it up with them at the end and exchange business cards.

Many of the drinks they were serving were made available in a small mountain in these huge wagons. They were a little heavier than our wagon at home. Check out kid staring at me like I'm crazy in the picture below. Nice.

The meat of the matter

Ok, time to put at least a little substance in to this thing before I start sending out the link to everybody. It's a quickie, but I've been saving this one since my first day of work.

You know I was going to refrain from mentioning my place of employment in this blog, but I think it might not be as effective that way, so I'm going to have to go ahead and say that I'm working for Microsoft. Post number 3. Guess that policy didn't last very long. So I'm at my first day at Microsoft, attending the new employee orientation that all new employees attend to get oriented. Apt name, huh? There are like 170ish other people there (and they do this every week) because MS is huge and they are growing pretty darn fast. According to HR, as of sometime last year roughly 19% of the company had been hired within the past year. Crazy. Anyway, they let us out for our first break. I headed to the restrooms since we'd been sitting for a while. Strangely enough, a number of other people had the same idea I did and by the time I got there a line had formed that ran out of the bathroom door and down the hallway a bit. So I got in line to wait. I couldn't help but notice though, that when I looked over to the left at the women's room there was no line at all. A few women were walking in and out of the door.

Oh the software business.