I thought I'd post a kind of update mail...I'm just over a month into my new role in the ASP.NET team. I've said before it's a really small team in Microsoft terms; there's 7 Program Managers in my current team compared with more than twice that number in my previous team. I've written before on how impressed I've been by everyone (and I mean everyone) in the team, PM, Dev and QA and well, suck-upy (not a word!) though it sounds it's true.
What have I been doing, well I've mostly been helping out with releases from the team (ooh, and watch out this week!), getting ramped up on a couple of features I'm going to deliver for VNext (which I'm pretty excited about) and learning the ins-and outs of the team. One big thing you learn at Microsoft is that no-one will tell you what to do...you have to find out...this can be a huge challenge for new hires but in reality it's one of the biggest plusses...you make your own path and career.
One of the really surprising things I've discovered is how much time the 'names' in the team actually spend 'down in the trenches'. Now this isn't reflecting badly on previous managers I've had, MS is a huge company and it comes with a lot of swarf which consumes a huge amount of time (I spend most of every day working this stuff out to make our releases quicker and smoother...). One example was today...I share an office with another PM (Phil Haack) who's 'owns' (in a very real sense, another MS thing...) the new ASP.NET MVC framework; it's still being worked on...it's very new and we spend a huge amount of effort getting this stuff 'just right'. Now, I'd always read the Scott Guthrie posts and though 'great PR...someone writes this stuff up and sticks it on his blog'...WRONG! He actually 'gets it'...to a very deep level...I've never met a Corporate Vice President of a multi-billion dollar company who has Visual Studio open on his laptop most of the time. He does...(oh and these are his settings). I was 'in the room' when he, Phil and Eilon were chatting about MVC...well put it this way...I'm now convinced he writes the blog posts...
Anyway, I continue to be impressed by the place I moved to and more and more convinced I made the right choice. I'm slightly getting over my fanboyism (another non-word!) but I'm still not into the whole 'super-excited' American thing (which I'm still not convinced is sincere) .
Oh, and this is my last syncophantic post...it's really not me!