Office Enterprise 2007 blog q-a-with-zeeshan-forme

By: Ginny Cheng

In my final post, I encouraged college students that could possibly be hesitant in creating Redmond a long-term investment to look at the possibilities of checking out possibilities with Microsoft in other places (domestic & international) after they’ve been at HQ for a few years. Then again, many employees end up falling in love with the Emerald City and producing it their permanent home, so you never know.

To give a real life example that there are indeed possibilities for employees to explore outside of HQ, I approached my friend, Zeeshan – a former college hire (2002) and a 3x intern from University of Waterloo - for his consider on his adventures that led him to Washington, DC. He also gives some good advice for new hires already at Microsoft!

Q: How did you know Microsoft was the right choice for you straight out of college?

A: I did an internship with Microsoft and loved the diversity of people and technology Microsoft provided. I was hooked. I did two more internships and had no doubt I wanted to work for Microsoft fulltime. To give you an idea of what I mean by diversity of technologies and options, my first internship was as an SDET in Office. For my next internship, I decided I wanted to do something closer to the end user. So, I went to mobile devices as an SDET. I really enjoyed being an SDET, but I really wanted to be an SDE. So I came back as an SDE for my last internship. There aren’t very many companies that provide this sort of flexibility.

I started my full-time career at Microsoft as an SDE in mobile devices. My first team was Office Mobile where I worked on a number of technologies, including the richink control, Excel mobile, Powerpoint mobile and Word mobile. After that, I transitioned to Outlook Mobile as a Messaging dev lead, where my team owned secure messaging, rights management, out of office assistant, and exchange search.

After five years in mobile, I wanted to do something different. Again, this goes to show why I picked Microsoft. This desire for a change brought me to the Healthcare Solutions team, where I am currently a developer.

Q: I’ll bet many people do not realize that Microsoft is in the Heathcare Solutions business. What does your team do? And, why did you get on this challenge?

A: My current team is a company Microsoft acquired last year. We develop an enterprise health platform that aggregates data from all sources in an enterprise (in our case hospitals) for a unified view. After half a decade with mobile devices,Office Enterprise 2007, I wanted to do something different. I had several offers from different teams in Microsoft. At the end, I liked the fact that Azyxxi was an acquired startup. I wanted to gain startup experience, as nicely as help integrate an acquired company. The team actually has a presence in Bellevue as well, so I didn’t have to move to DC. It was actually the GM in my previous team who helped me see that DC was a better option. I am glad she did.

Q: Students often wonder if there are other development possibilities outside of Redmond, can you tell us what resource you used to do your search? Did you believe it was also about timing?

A: I used our internal careers website that Microsofties use to find other jobs. I found several teams outside Microsoft. There were several positions in California, as effectively as, a few in Boston. I was not looking specifically outside Redmond, if I had, then I would have found even more. I also know several people who work remotely from areas other than Redmond. I don’t feel it had anything to do with timing. The teams I mentioned are all growing and are constantly hiring people.

Q: What are the advantages of working in Redmond first?

A: Although not necessarily a “must”, it is true that the experience you gain in Redmond is different from experience outside of Redmond. But it is also true for different teams in Redmond. Zune’s culture is very different from that of Office, which itself is different from Mobile.

You do have more networking opportunities in Redmond. I routinely met people from many different teams, something that’s harder to do now. However, outside of Redmond, you do interact with different teams in Redmond and do make new contacts. You just have to stay in touch with them differently (we use Communicator a lot).

Another disadvantage of starting away from Redmond, is that you won’t get to see other cultures. Although I worked in mobile devices, I spent enough time with people from other teams (Office, Exchange, Xbox etc) that I also got to understand their cultures. However, it isn’t that big a disadvantage.

Q: How did your manager support you in the process of this new position? How did you find out about this position?

A: My previous management was bummed that I wanted to leave, but they totally supported my decision. In fact, I actually brainstormed my options with my previous management, and they helped me pick one. It was actually my previous GM who nudged me into accepting the DC position, instead of the one in Redmond.

I heard of this specific team through a friend, but opened jobs are also posted in Microsoft Careers website.

Q: Any advice you’d give to future college students interviewing with Microsoft?

A: I have interviewed a lot of college candidates. A common problem sometimes is that people try to impress their interviewers a little too much. I went through interviews myself when I was switching teams and can tell you from experience to just be yourself. Many times there are no right (or wrong) answers to what interviewers are asking. Just be honest.

Best interviews are ones where you have candid discussions with the interviewer, giving the interviewer an insight into the candidate. Worst interviews, therefore, are ones where the interviewer comes out of the interview without really knowing the candidate. Those situations are easy "no-hires". How can you hire someone you couldn’t really evaluate? I consider this happens when candidates aren’t themselves during the interview.

In addition, please do prepare. I have seen candidates apply to jobs that specifically ask for a certain skill, and candidates pleading ignorance during interviews. That doesn’t work. If you’re applying for a technical role then brush up on technical skills. Learn a bit about the team, if possible. Try to understand yourself. For instance, if asked for a weakness then you should really know what it is. It isn’t impressive to see a candidate spend 5 minutes trying to come up with a personal weakness. Show your passion (we are all passionate about something). I found it helpful to interview myself. I asked myself all sort of questions and I made sure I knew the answers to those questions.

This doesn’t contradict the honest discussion part I mentioned above. For instance, an interviewer asked me if I had ideas on Google compete. I actually did, because I had believed about it. I was also asked about my business interests, had discussions on management styles, and even personal weaknesses. I was honest in responding to all of them, but I had done my homework to make sure I did not waste valuable time thinking about my management style.

A specific advice for technical interviews (a few hints rather). We don’t really care if you come up with the best algorithm ever written to solve a given problem. We are more interested in understanding your thought process. I have seen people shoot themselves by trying to over-optimize after a perfectly good start. A less optimal solution is better than no solution.

Also, do try to understand the problem. It doesn’t help if the interviewer asked for the integer with most occurrences and your solution returns the number of occurrences instead.

Finally, test and verify all solutions, even if they are just high-level designs. It isn’t enough to solve a problem, you also have to prove that your solution is a correct one, and that’s where testing comes in.

Q: Any advice you’d give to new hires already at Microsoft?

A: I actually have three main suggestions:

First, in many ways Microsoft is like college, except you make a ton of money while learning. I am sure there are other companies out there that provide as many learning opportunities, but I am certain there are very few and far between. Microsoft has great training resources and mentor programs, and people here really enjoy coaching. My first advice would be to take full advantage of this.

Secondly, Microsoft also puts a great deal of emphasis on people’s careers. However, most people don’t actively assume about their own careers, and that is a mistake. Managing a career is different from just doing a job. Managing a career means your job should be aligned to your career goals. Your commitments and achievements should consider you closer to your goals. If what you find yourself doing isn’t doing that, then speak up. You’ll find that most Microsoft managers are very willing to fix things. In my experience, a lot of the time, job dissatisfaction comes from lack of communication, rather than lack of willingness of managers to create a better working environment.

Other than that, just have fun. Microsoft has a good work hard play harder environment. We get a lot of discounts for local activities (in Northwest and elsewhere), and I always took advantage of those.

Q: Any other interesting thing you'd like to share with us? How do you like DC? Do you picture yourself going back to Redmond again?

A: DC is cool. A lot of things here are free. I’ve been hitting museums, the zoo and even some shows, and they’re all free! It is super hot though (Redmond doesn’t get that hot). It’s 99 today. However, I do see sun every day, which is nice. The good metro system is also very nice to have. It is also a much more culturally and racially diverse area, which makes it exciting for a person like me who enjoys interacting with people from different cultures and backgrounds.

As for the future, I just got here. I think I can achieve the next few milestones in my career easily on this team in DC. After doing that, if I find myself looking for a change and if my current team is unable to provide the change, then I’ll search around. If what appeals to me happens to be in Redmond, then I’ll be in Redmond again . I do miss Seattle, it’s a really cool city as well. I am already planning a personal December visit to Seattle.

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*Note to self…don’t forget to bring Ginny a nice gift from DC when visiting Seattle in December.
(OK, I, as in Ginny, wrote that..ha ha)

- Ginny