What It’s Like to Work at Microsoft – A Field Guide, Part 2

(View Part 1 of this series.)

Right! Back from lunch? Good!

It’s great to see facilities on top of replacing that pesky doorstop that kept getting knocked off the wall,

Now back to your office – if you’re in a group that still has offices instead of the open plan spaces that are popping up everywhere.

The single person office used to be a nice perk at Microsoft, but due to continued headcount growth over the years most new hires will spend years doubled, tripled, or more in offices. These tight quarters can foster a very collegial atmosphere.

It’s very collegial in the sense that you can make some great friends with the right officemates or be reminded why you wanted to become a hermit and not see humanity any more when they microwave leftover fish for lunch and stink up the whole floor. Or they walk into the bathroom in bare feet with their overgrown toenails clacking on the floor. Or they leave the remains of their snacks on conference room tables and chairs right before your big presentation. Or they brush their teeth at the kitchen sink. Or, Never. Stop. Talking. When. You’re. Trying. To. Get. Work. Done.

The two shortest routes to a private office are either tenure,

or management. (There’ll be much, much more about management at Microsoft in a future post…)

Until either of those events occur, try to liven up your windowless office,

Some people try to make their isolation spaces as personal as possible, ranging from shrines to Star Wars,

to model railroads,

to more externally-facing accoutrements,

So you shut yourself in your office, ignore the email, and you work, and work some more. And more. And more again. And…

Well, then, a miracle occurs! You actually get something done from vision to completion and through some crazy lobbying, you produce a physical artifact destined for distribution,

then the budget gets cut, and it is distributed as a PDF only. Oh well! On the upside, most editors don’t check hex codes, so you were able to sneak 4B696C626F onto page 97.

While you’ve been working, other groups ship,

and then suddenly, they play their last pink note and are disappeared down the memory-hole,

(Where does a pink piano go to live, anyway? Elton John’s house?)

Then through much harder work by others, the product you’re working on ships!

To celebrate, you get to participate in what turns out to be an infamous parade,

and you drink so much vodka at 10 AM,

that by 2 PM you’re not quite sure where the pink flamingo came from,

The post-ship period is a bit of a lull, so some people take the opportunity to change jobs and even companies,

But if you hang around, you eventually get your ship gift,

Then, it’s lather, rinse, repeat time to ship again,

and party,

Then you change groups and offices, and ask facilities for a 12 gallon garbage can for your office, and this is what they deliver,

(Those pesky decimal point errors crop up everywhere!)

And you lather, rinse, and repeat again,

and since you know the folks in Marketing, you luck out and get the first voiceover slot for the ship party video, and the ship gift even turns out to be something useful. A zipper pull! (Attached to a nice jacket,)

Then it’s time to get all fired up again for another run and,

You  have time to think about when you turned down a job at Microsoft in 1995 to start your own company (page 33), and wonder if it isn’t time to put the work grind on pause and attend to family for a bit before deciding what to do next.

Microsoft will always take your call if you know the proper extension to dial,

So relax a bit and let the warm fuzzy memories seep in as you cozy up for the winter,

and as you drift off, you enter that half-awake dream fugue state where time is elastic, and your subconscious feeds up images that flow like water, and this one floats by,

and then you’re suddenly shocked back wide awake, and you remember the other parts of working there.

(To be continued…)