Genuine Office 2010 blog ian-ellison-taylor-micros

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The geek in query: Ian Ellison-Taylor
The employment title: Basic Manager, Presentation Platform and Equipment
What are you doing perfect now?
I'm the Basic Supervisor of Presentation Platform and Instruments,Office 2007, that is about 170 people today who function on Windows Presentation Foundation. We also possess the Jolt team internally, which is all the graphical animation media parts and Silverlight. And I've a resources group known as Cider that delivers resources for each these groups to use. It is your conventional developer/test/PM kinda organization.
How quite a few decades have you been with Microsoft?
Seventeen years this summer. I came straight from school — well, technically I worked for a UK company for about five minutes, but basically I'd just graduated and came for an internship in 1990.
Can you tell me how a large number of different positions you've had?
I couldn't possibly tell you that. Titles have changed probably once a year. I started in development, then switched to project management. Then I became a check supervisor, before moving into basic management and strategy.
It's been new roles, new titles, new challenges every year or so. I stopped putting my title on my business card a long time ago because it was getting from date so quickly. So now they just have my name, and Microsoft.
And Braille.
Yes, and Braille.
So, you're a quintessential career Microsoftie. This has been your Masters degree, and probably by this point your PhD, too.
…And an MBA in there somewhere.
Proper,Office 2007 License! Tell me about your MBA from Microsoft.
In terms of getting an MBA, I debated going back to school, but Microsoft has remarkable training program on the leadership tracks. And Wharton Business College leads ongoing training courses for Microsoft employees — you get to spend a week talking with some of the industry's best trainers. And for free!
You get access to an amazing peer group too — plenty of other Microsoft folks from other departments, and all over the planet! A large amount of the classes have students from all over Europe and Asia, and so you get this great perspective which you just wouldn't get from a typical MBA program. I still go to those classes. There are always new ones.
What products have you worked with?
I've been all over the place because I wanted to try different things in different groups. I interned in Languages — which is now Developer Division with 2000 men and women. It was a great deal smaller back then. Then I got into Windows. It wasn't an obvious success at the time — it was just another project that might be a hit, or it might not. After five a long time, I was still having a blast, but wanted to try something different. So from there I went to IE and Java. And now WPF.
So, you've worked on Windows,Office Pro 2010, which is used by bazillions of many people —
It is about a billion now. Somewhere between 800,000 million and a billion, I think? It is ridiculous because it was 10 people today when I started.
A billion people — that means your operate has touched one sixth of the planet?
When you put it like that it's kind of scary. But,Genuine Office 2010, yeah. It's a huge quantity of men and women.
Does that keep you up at night?
Not really. But maybe it should! I don't think about it other than feeling this basic responsibility to a big variety of men and women who base their lives on some of the software we produce — they can't get around, they can't function, they can't do their jobs, they can't manage their families — if we don't do a good job on our side.
But it doesn't have to be billions of persons to feel that way. It could be 10 folks — if they really care about your product and are depending on you, it's important.
So when you're not working on software that's impacting a sixth with the planet, what do you do?
I've a house on Vashon Island,Office 2010 Activation, and so I spent my time away from operate plowing fields and building fences.
Links to make you happy:
Silverlight Windows Presentation Platform & Equipment on MSDN Ian's Channel 9 video about Windows history (check out Ian's mysterious accent!) Ian on Facebook