I *am* the empire

I keep finding myself interacting with the folks in recruiting and learning & development. I often find that these are some of the brightest and creative folks around. Over my 2.5 year tenure here at Microsoft, I’ve managed to maintain (sporadically, at least) this blog and my nonsensical BlueBadgeMojo, which attempts to capture “anything and everything irrelevant about life at Microsoft.” I’ve had fun with it, and have enjoyed the connections I’ve been able to make through the site. And once in a while I come across someone who seems to be having just as much fun: as with Ariel Stallings, who runs the Microspotting site. She has one of the coolest jobs (almost as cool as the MDG folks), and has built quite the following. Of course, if you hand out free t-shirts, the people will come! I got mine, of course, and took a couple pics this morning in celebration.

I’m sure most people are familiar with the Microsoft moniker as The Evil Empire, right? Well, the purpose of Ariel’s blog is to break down that image, and show you the people behind the corporate face. People like me. Sure, we’re a big company, and with any big company comes a lot of bureaucracy. But I’m thoroughly enjoying my time here, and look forward to many years more of working on next generation products and services. Oh yeah, and I’m hiring (1 PM, 2 Business Analysts)