Today I attended my first test design review with the group I am in. What a welcome change this was! At Microsoft (at least in my group), there is about a 1-1 mapping of Development Engineers to Test Engineers. As specs are completed designs are started for both the implementation of the software as well as for how that software will be tested. Both teams get together to review each others designs to ensure that things are aligned. Seems simple and the way that it should be done.

It's amazing to me because this is the first software job I've been in where I didn't have to go beg, grovel and fight for resources to help test the software that our teams were building. Management at my past employers always saw test as a one of those things that was a buffer in the schedule and it was always staffed in a way that reflected that. Here there are very senior engineers working in test and some really smart people at that.

Well, I'm alive and kicking. I started my 4th week of working at Microsoft this week as a Program Manager in the Connected Tools Division. I haven't read the entire legal document on what I can and cannot blog about so I will keep this short for now. Things are going well. I've been getting to know the team and starting to see some areas where I will be able to contribute and even some places where my experience in the anti-MS world can play a big part. Things are starting to pick up for me as well. This is a relief as things have been pretty slow for quite awhile now. In July of 2006 Sun announced a layoff that would hit our group (CNS) pretty hard. Things pretty much came to a halt there until August when it hit. Then things were all up in the air about what we would be doing, this lasted until the end of September when my wife and I took off for Hawaii for 6 weeks. When I got back, my team was sort of going on a project with some direction. The holidays came and slowed things down a bit, and when we returned from Christmas break I gave my notice. I was given a couple of unexpected weeks off and ended up with a whole month off in between jobs. Things are always a bit slow when you start a new job, there is the ramp up time that seems like so much is happening, but it is all just learning and you don't get involved a whole lot, except to do your ramp up time. But I am just hitting that point where traction seems to take place and I am excited to be back working hard again.

I'm excited about the group that I am in. It really reminds me of my early days at Sun when I was working with a lot of people that I felt were much smarter than I was. There is a lot of opportunity to learn a lot of cool stuff. We're also working on some really interesting new technology that is exciting to be a part of. One of the things that drew me to MS the most was thier ability to deliver software (you may n0t like it or think it is worth delivering, but they do deliver and then continue to deliver subsequent releases). I've been in a lot of software companies in different positions but none of those places had much of a track record for delivering. So I look forward to seeing what makes this work, what makes MS be able to churn out software like they do....

Although I am getting tremendous amounts of crap from all of my friends and past co-workers about taking this job with the "evil empire" and keep getting told that I am "drinking the kool-aid", I am actually enjoying myself and am actually starting to be able to use some of these products that I loathed for so many years. There is an amazing culture here at MS that was woefully lacking at Sun. There is non-stop technical discussion, people are excited about what they are working on, people are excited about technology, and people are excited about the company that they work for. That is a breath of fresh air from the last few years....

That's all for now.