So this is my first post after getting into Microsoft.

Do you remember that old joke about Wendy? The one where this guy gets a tattoo that says his wife’s name Wendy and then notices someone else’s Wendy tattoo which reads ‘Welcome to Jamaica, have a nice day’. That’s a little like what MS has been like if you shift that metaphor to an intellectual plane.

The first two days has been disillusionment of sorts – now the fun is coming back: I am part of a team (I need to check, if I can mention the work on the public network) that is fairly into the thick of things right now. And I am one of three devs who are working out of Hyderabad, with believe a few people in Redmond as well.

The sheer amount of stuff that hits you as new is mind boggling; esp in comparison with other places where I have worked where by now nothing would have got off the ground. Here I was hit with a mountain of work. If you are a certain kind of person you would actually enjoy this – I have responsibilities form day 1 and I have a complete set of ownership on the entire code base that that is assigned to me. And its interesting in the sense that it spans over diverse technologies like WMI, COM, MMC, C#, C++, IAS, IIS, various authentication mechanisms (NTLM, Certs, Kerb), RPC, NT Services and on and on. All this and more – and what’s better, I am already writing code. (Of course not all new hires get to code from day 1, but…). And the best part is that its all mine – its my baby to write and create. I compare this with other places where my ownership was limit to a web page or two, or where there is no sense of owner ship and personal style or worse - where you ownership is limited a word doc! Deepak, used to be right – at Microsoft you are flung into the water and expected to swim – and it’s such good fun.

I actually have a lot to say, but I am really out of time. I need to go now and I haven’t had much free time, or I would have liked to write more. I also must say that I can also see here parts of that  same Microsoft where Kraig Brockschmidt could have written ‘Mystic Microsoft’ or Adam Barr could have written his ‘Proudly Serving’. Its all that and yet there is so much more… I am only beginning to explore this place that shows signs of terrestrial intelligence.