Thread by @Ross_Heise

I recently had my 24th anniversary at work so I thought I'd share some of my best Microsoft memories over the next year.

#MicrosoftLife

I started working for Microsoft Consulting Services on Feb 14, 1994(Valentines Day) in Minneapolis. I went onsite with a customer that same day, getting introduced around. I also setup my first "laptop"-a Compaq Portable 386. "Weighs less than 20 pounds!"
old-computers.com/museum/compute…

This was also when the excitement for Windows 95 was just starting. Here's one of first free t-shirts I ever received. For a day or 2 I worked the booth at the Minnesota State Fair, demonstrating Win95 to fair goers.

Somewhere in that timeframe, I also signed up to beta test MSN - the Microsoft Network. Here's the free t-shirt I got for being a beta tester.

More Microsoft memories: Around Oct 1994, I spent 2 weeks in Redmond working on the Windows 95 Resource Kit. @yusuf_i_mehdi and Keith White were the project managers I worked with.

I wrote about a few different technologies - but System Policy Templates was were I spent most of my time. Pages 518-524 in case you want to look it up.
The book sold over 500k copies and was translated into many languages - it was fun to look at a copy when I was in Paris.

I even got my name in print, listed in the "Technical Consultants" section.

Also from 1995, my 20th anniversary watch:

More Microsoft Memories:
The MicroNews was our weekly company newspaper. Here's the 8/25/95 edition after Windows 95 launched.

#Windows95

Microsoft did lots of ads for #Windows95-remember the 'Start Me Up' campaign? (Btw, that look from the girl at the end is still awesome.)

Microsoft did a followup ad campaign called 'Heroes'. As part of my work for Microsoft Consulting Services, I was involved in a software project that configured trucks for Freightliner. You get a glimpse of some of my code in action in this ad:

More memories-some pre-Microsoft memories this time:

Was digging through my archives and found the first computer book I ever bought. Think it was the summer of 1980. I didn't have access to a computer until I went back to school that fall...

#TRS80
@RadioShack

...so I wrote out the programs by hand and then tested them when I got back to school in September.

I eventually bought my own TRS-80 Color Computer, with its own colorful manual and Color Basic shortcut card.

#TRS80CoCo

Regretfully, I sold my first Color Computer. But I put that money towards the second generation CoCo, which I still have today.

Incidentally, the game Dungeons of Daggorath played prominently in the book #ReadyPlayerOne (but not the movie). And that game was on the CoCo. We had a lot of fun playing it back then.

Couple more pre-Microsoft memories before I move on:

Here's when gaming was serious - when you had to type in the code for a game before you could play it. (Kids today have it so easy. #getoffmylawn)

And old #TRS80 magazine from 1982. Happy to see they actually put a girl on the cover.

Back to Microsoft memories:

Here's a comic book from my first Microsoft Global Summit in 1994. The whole conference had a comic book theme - each speaker was a different superhero.

And we had nice weather in San Diego.

And here is a brochure from Microsoft's 20th anniversary in 1995.

I like the quote on the front cover. My first day was very similar - "Welcome to Microsoft Consulting Services, here's your PC, let's go meet the customer - they have some questions for you."

More Microsoft memories:
My goal, as soon as I joined Microsoft, was to transfer to Paris. I had been there on vacation a couple of times and knew I had to live there - to truly take in the whole city.

In Oct 1995, my wife and I flew to our new home in Paris. It is truly an exciting thing, to have in your hand, a one-way ticket to the City of Lights.

We arrived at the start of a 3 week transportation strike - that meant finalizing work permits, finding an apartment, opening accounts and getting settled with no metro trains running and massive traffic jams.
Bienvenue à Paris!

I worked for Microsoft Consulting Services France until 1998. There were some cultural challenges along the way but it was a great experience overall. I got to travel for work, eat some great meals, and meet some great Microsofties.

One memorable trip: We were on vacation and my client emailed that they wanted me in Lyon for a meeting the next day. I managed to buy a polo shirt when I arrived in town and made it to the meeting on time.

Then they wanted me to stay another day. I said the only clean shirt I have left is a t-shirt. Fine they said. So I went to the client wearing a t-shirt - very unusual in France, where things were more formal.

Then they wanted me to stay another day. "No," I said, "I'm out of clean clothes." And headed home exhausted.
But I did have some great meals in Lyon.

Driving in Paris was crazy, as you can imagine. I preferred public transportation over using my company car. Here, in the Microsoft newsletter, they tease me about driving into work for the first time, with my car.

Here's my MCS France t-shirt.

The internet was really taking off while we were in Paris - here's my Internet Explorer 4.0 t-shirt.

Finally, I bought my first digital camera while we were living in Paris. It was a Sony Cybershot. Maybe an DSC-F1 or DSC-F2?

640 x 480 amazin' pixels of image resolution. And I think I paid around $750-800 for it?

camera-wiki.org/wiki/Sony_DSC-…

Here are some of my early photos:

- Tour Eiffel - note that they were counting down the days until the year 2000.
- Place de la Concorde (I think)

And a photo of our apartment building (in the 15th), and me taking a picture in the elevator in our building.

+ Msft memories:
Some final thoughts about driving in Paris. My colleagues would tease me about taking public transit instead of using my company car. But I had last laugh when they shared some data on the company car usage.

I can't remember the exact numbers but in 1 year, they had ~350 insurance claims on the ~250 company cars. So you were almost guaranteed some kind of bump or fender bender in a years worth of driving. I was happy to stick to the Metro.

I did have to use my car sometimes though, to get to certain clients. So I remember proudly parking on the sidewalk, like a true Parisian, when visiting one customer.

Other memories of working in Paris - everyone got 5 weeks of vaction. It's not just a good idea, it's the law. :-) I also got a couple of extra of vacation because, at 33 years of age, Microsoft determined I needed extra rest.

We were also required to get a yearly checkup with a doctor at a nearby clinic. The doc was super nice and she spoke excellent English. She had studied at Cal-Berkeley in the 70's. When I asked her if she enjoyed her time there, she said it was a dream to be in Berkeley then.

+ Msft Memories:
At some point in 1995 or 1996, the team that produced Cinemania asked Microsoft employees for personal reviews to be included in the next version of Cinemania - our popular, pre-IMDB, movie information CD-ROM.

My submission of a review of 'Delicatessen' was accepted and published! I called it the most romantic cannibalism movie I had ever seen.

I think my review was on Cinemania 96 but I can't remember for sure. Will load it up sometime when I have a chance.

And I'm back with more Microsoft memories from my nearly 25 years at the company. Took a break for youth football season - I just completed my 19th year coaching youth in the Eastside area.

I also help run the league website and schedule the games. (Scheduling can be an interesting programming challenge.)

The great thing is that Microsoft donates $25/hour of my volunteer time. So the Boys and Girls Club is always very happy to get those matching dollars.

Back in 2012, I even got my name in a press release

"Since 2005, Ross Heise, a senior content publisher in Windows, has volunteered for more than 1,220 hours for the Boys & Girls Clubs in the Puget Sound region."

news.microsoft.com/2012/02/08/mic…

Wasn't even aware of the press release until after it was published and a friend noticed it. Anyway, I've added a lot more hours since then. Always happy to work with the Boys & Girls Club - really believe in their programs.

So I'm continuing my thread on nearly 25 years of Microsoft Memories:

In early 1998, a friend of a friend told me about Premier Support for Developers. Here, I almost made one of the biggest mistakes of my career. My initial reaction was ‘Support? No way am I doing that.’

Luckily I investigated further. Being an Application Developer Consultant (ADC) in Premier meant consulting with assigned customers but with much less travel.

Somewhat ironically, the best way to handle the job was not to sit back and wait for support calls but to be proactive and get involved with their development architectures. Avoiding problems up front prevented a lot of support fires down the road.

And so it worked out well and I had some good years in Premier.

+Msft Memories: So in June 1998, we moved back to the US. Microsoft was great in helping out with the move. We settled in and I received a paycheck or two and all was good. Then I got my next paycheck and it was huge–much, much bigger than expected. Like 5x bigger than normal.

I emailed payroll saying that while I appreciated the extra money, they may want to look into this. They replied that it was a little glitch and that things would even out. I said ‘Thanks, I’ll happily keep the money but I really think you want to look into this.’

And so they did. And the mistake was corrected. Still not sure exactly what happened but at the time the exchange rate was about 5 French Francs to the dollar (This is still pre-Euro days).

And since the paycheck was about 5x bigger than it should have been, I wonder if my US salary got converted to Francs somehow. Anyway, it was fun for a day.

Continuing the thread on my 25 yrs of Msft memories - here are a few more Premier for Developers memories:

Somewhere around 1999 or 2000, I created a “Customer ready email” alias for Premier consultants to share information with each other. The alias is still alive and kicking today. I'm kinda proud as there are not that many email aliases at Microsoft that last that long.

I was in Premier for Y2k, so everyone had to sign up for a shift over the weekend to be there in case…something happened. No one was quite sure what that would be. I decided to get my shift done right away so I signed up for the first time slot.

The evening of Dec 31, 1999, we were well fed, watched movies, and waited for our Y2k Premier Support hotline phone to ring. And waited. And waited. Finally, it rang. We all looked at each other – no one was too excited to pick up so I finally answered.

Turns out it was just a Premier manager calling, making sure the hotline was working. Whew. And that was our only call for Y2k, so everyone who signed up for later shifts was not required to come in. (Brilliant idea to sign up for first shift, eh?)

Side note: Years later, we did a video with Raymond Chen where he talked about his memories of Y2k - kinda fun:
channel9.msdn.com/Blogs/One-Dev-…

+ Msft Memories thread:
Recording our labor hours against our Premier customer contracts was a big deal – customers wanted to know what we were doing for them. Our old tools were not great – a non-time tracking system kludged together to try to track time.

So I was asked to manage a project to create a tool to record our hours and work. Project Novocain was born – to numb the pain of labor recording. It was only meant to be a stop-gap solution – to last about 18-24 months - until the real solution was put into place.

So myself and a team of 4 other excellent ADCs went to work and created a tool in about 4 months. Our ‘temp’ solution ended up being used for almost 10 years. It may have not been the prettiest tool in the world but it did the job.

Always nice to have a project where the bar is low. I always said stone tablets and a chisel would have been easier than our old system.

More Msft memories:
When you tell people you work at Microsoft, you frequently will get asked if you ever met Bill. I was close to him on a few occasions - walked past him at a conference, sat near him at a Paula Poundstone show in Seattle, and once opened the door for him.

(My wife and I were at a movie in Bellevue. As we left the theatre, I held the door for the next person. It turned out that Bill and Melinda were right behind us. I admit I did a double take.)

Anyway, I finally did meet Bill. We used to have a large company meeting where everyone in the Redmond area would get together and spend a day hearing about our successes from the past year and what we were working on for the upcoming year.

I attended 1 or 2 when they were at the Kingdome, before it was imploded in March 2000.

For a few years after that, the meeting was held at Safeco Field. It was at one of these Safeco Field meetings that I got to meet Bill Gates – maybe in 2000 or 2001? Somewhere around there.

Bill was just wandering amongst the crowd after the meeting finished and people were asking him questions. I waited my turn, introduced myself and shook his hand, and then asked him about our investment in Comcast.
news.microsoft.com/1997/06/09/mic…

So anyway, yes, I have met Bill Gates.
And I’m sure I remember that particular experience better than Bill does.

+ Msft Memories:
Sometimes Premier Support for Developers would sell an internal contract to a group within Microsoft. I worked on one of these for Windows 2000 – we wrote some of the COM+ and MSMQ samples.

So a few of us Premier consultants were invited to participate in a Windows 2000 group photo for Forbes magazine.

Different groups were given different color shirts – PMs, Programmers, Test, and Other (localization, samples, etc) so we were part of the 'Other' group wearing orange shirts.

Here’s the best link I could find for the August 1999 article online - forbes.com/asap/1999/0823…

To take the picture, we stood on a field, with a photographer high in the air on a crane. On the count of 3, we all had to jump. Then do it again. And again. And again–I can’t remember how many times we had to do it but our jumps definitely got less enthusiastic as time went on.

We also got posters of the picture, so I had it framed and now have a nice remembrance of that project.

Side note to this thread:
Thanks to some help from @WinObs, you can now more easily read this whole thread at threadreaderapp.com/thread/9827046…

+Msft Memories
In 2004, I started looking to transfer out of Premier – just needed a change. Again, I almost made a mistake. A colleague of mine had become a programmer writer in the SQL team. Write API documentation all day? No thanks.

But after talking with my friend I realized the job was much more than that. You are the very first customer for a new technology. You get to figure it out, create some samples, and wrap your head around it with the help of the product group.

Then you get to explain it to the world. Hey, that sounds fun. So I applied for a writing position on the SQL team and promptly bombed the initial screening. A rough day at work had put me in a bad frame of mind and I didn’t do well.

So I kept searching and, with a little patience, finally landed a programmer writer position on the Windows CE/Windows Mobile team. This was about the time of Windows CE 5.0 (Macallan) and Windows Mobile 5 (Magneto).

Here’s some momentos of some Windows CE projects from my consulting days – it was fun to finally be part of the Windows CE product team.

And when we shipped Windows Mobile 5.0, I finally, after 11 years at Microsoft, got my first Ship It award.

Finally found that other Windows CE device in my archives - a Handheld PC:

+ Msft Memories:
While I was on the Windows CE team, they had a contest to find bugs. I filed a few bugs and #WinnerWinnerChickenDinner – I won a Zune.

And not just any Zune but a limited edition orange Zune. #HappyDay

Another Msft memory:
Microsoft provided great assistance with another important part of my life. In 2001, my wife and I decided to adopt a child. Microsoft provided assistance – both guidance and financial – throughout the whole process.

I was able to take 3 months off when we came home with our 4.5 month old baby girl – part paid, part unpaid – and the chance to bond with her was so appreciated.

I later was able to get into a job share role as a writer, providing me with more time to spend with her before she started school. I’ll always be grateful to Microsoft for their help in this significant event in our lives.

Btw, when we flew to Seoul in June 2002 to meet our daughter, we arrived in the middle of the World Cup that Seoul was hosting.

What a wild time – meeting and spending time with our daughter at appointments during the day and then having literally a million people in the streets watching South Korea play soccer. (They ended up finishing fourth in the World Cup that year.)

More Msft memories:
Eventually, as part of the Windows Mobile team, we started working on Windows Phone 7 – a major reworking of our phone offering. It was all kept quiet while Microsoft was preparing for the big announcement but we were of course preparing the documentation.

I worked on the SDK documentation – some ‘Getting Started’ docs along with other topics. A colleague of mine worked on some docs for OEMs, who were already making the phones. He incorporated some of my documentation into the OEM docs.

His docs went to some OEMs and someone, somewhere along the line leaked the docs to the press. And soon, there was a screenshot of my docs on the homepage of Engadget.

‘Yikes’ was my first reaction – did I make a mistake and leak something by mistake?
But then I could see it came from the OEM docs.
Whew!
Anyway, it stopped my heart for a second there.

Here are some of my old phones. This Samsung was from the Windows Mobile 6.0 days.

Think the HTC HD7 was my first WP7.

My wife really liked this HTC 8x.

The Nokia 920 was a tank - really hefty and well built.

Here's the Nokia 1020, with its familiar hump in the back. Probably my favorite - that phone took some great pictures for its time.

+ More Msft memories
Can working at Microsoft make you famous? Hmmm. My fame may have started when @mhopkins1, a colleague of mine on Windows Phone, was writing an article and needed a picture of a hand pointing at something. I humbly volunteered.

And you can find Mark’s excellent Windows Phone article from 2012 here:
msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/magazine…

And the fame for my hand would continue to grow when it later appeared in a One Dev Minute video, opening a car door. Skip to the 1:25 mark to see my hand open the door. Also, that's me climbing into the car.

#DoINeedAnAgentYet

channel9.msdn.com/Blogs/One-Dev-…

Alas, my hand will never be as famous as @MicrosoftKarl’s hand. Here, Karl’s hand got the leading role in a Microsoft Surface Dial video.

#NotJealousAtAll
#WellMaybeALittleJealous

channel9.msdn.com/Blogs/One-Dev-…

+Msft memories:
After spending a few years on Windows Phone, I moved over to ‘big’ Windows and helped ship Windows 8. I owned the sensors and geolocation docs, as well as a few other areas.

It was a fun and interesting area of docs to own. I even got my name in lights. Er, well maybe not. But I did get my name in some blog posts. Here’s one on geofencing. (Have to scroll to the end to see my name.)
blogs.windows.com/buildingapps/2…

Here’s a followup piece on testing and debugging your geofencing apps
blogs.windows.com/buildingapps/2…

And another on creating location aware apps with Bing Maps. I have fond memories of writing all of these, especially running around outside, testing some of the apps out.
blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/windowsappdev/…

Another Msft memory:
Skipping back in time a little, to when the MicroNews was still printed and delivered every Friday. There were often some letters that battled over ‘controversial’ issues.

The use of BCC was one of controversies and one day I decided to make my contribution, with tongue somewhat in cheek (though I still don’t like people who BCC)

Another controversy, that I wanted no part of, was people complaining about hand washing. The April 1 issue of MicroNews was a good chance for everyone to have some fun. So the ‘MicroNews’ became the ‘MicroSnooze’ for a week and some articles took a unique look at the controversy

+ Msft memories:
It was while I was working on Windows 8 that I was given an opportunity to work on video v-team, to come up with some new developer videos to complement our documentation. I eagerly jumped at it – I did some basic video editing at home for fun.

Before us, some people had made some basic talking head developer videos – a person talking to the camera, with some PowerPoint slides to go along with them. Each video was about 20 minutes long.

So we had to ask ourselves:
Are these effective?
Will people watch the whole video?
How do you best combine written documentation and video?
How do you keep it engaging?
How do you keep videos current?

I myself have a short attention span, especially when watching technical videos. My mind starts to wander about other work, stuff to do at home, etc. So one decision we made was to keep the videos short – really short.

I wrote the first script, covering my area of geolocation.

But what to call it? We wanted a name for the series that indicated:
1) the video was short
2) this was for developers, and it was not marketing.

Noodling around in my head I thought “Give me just one darn minute of your time”. Hmmmmm. And so ‘One Dev Minute’ was born.
Here's the first One Dev Minute video:
channel9.msdn.com/Blogs/One-Dev-…

+Msft Memories:
After the first One Dev Minute video, we hired a talented video editor/director. Kelly is directly responsible for the look, feel, and rhythm of our @OneDevMinute /One Dev Question videos.

Jim and Jenny were part of the v-team in the beginning to help get things started.
Later @JohnKennedyMSFT and @TylerMsft joined the v-team. And finally @eliotcowley – all helping set the direction and find content for our videos.

It was a pretty cool when Joe Belfiore tweeted out our Cortana video – and even cooler to see the response -

https://twitter.com/joebelfiore/status/483754259633029120

+Memories from my nearly 25 years at Microsoft:
Now I get to one of my favorite stories.
First, let me say, I’m an owner in the NFL, like our late, great founder Paul Allen was. Unlike Paul, who owned 100% of the Seahawks, I own 1/5,011,558th of the Green Bay @Packers.

When I was writing my geolocation docs, I would often include Green Bay in the map images.
docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/…

Later I created a social email group at work dedicated to discussing Packer football. I’ve met some great people and true Packer fans in this group. I take great pride in having made this contribution to Microsoft. :-)

And a little over a year ago, by pure serendipity, my neighbor and colleague was working on what became the TitleTownTech project. I got to offer tidbits of advice on the project as it progressed.
titletowntech.com

This past year, when the Packers came to town to play the Seahawks, I helped organize a reception for the Packers to come in and talk about TitleTownTech. Those are my banners and flags decorating the room.

Brad Smith and Mark Murphy are sitting right in front of my Packer season ticket holder flag here.

And I was thrilled to meet and talk briefly with Packer COO and General Counsel Ed Policy and Packer President and CEO Mark Murphy. Truly a highlight of my career.
(Wearing my Bart Starr jersey here - major decision on which jersey to wear but you can't go wrong with Bart).

+Msft Memories
We’re very fortunate that Microsoft brings in some excellent speakers. Mostly through the Microsoft PAC but also through our 'Outside In' speaker series.

Through these programs, I got to meet @AnnaKendrick47 and thanks her for including several Green Bay @Packers in the Pitch Perfect 2 movie.

Kareem Abdul-Jabbar was gentle and soft spoken but spoke from the heart.

I got to see several astronauts – Chris Hadfield and Mike Barratt had fascinating stories about their adventures

If I had to pick some favorites – Mark Kelly and Gabby Giffords were amazing. Very powerful and emotional presentation.

I honestly didn’t know much about Bryan Stevenson going into his presentation but wow – I surely knew more about him afterwards. Eloquent speaker talking about serious issues.

Rainn Wilson was fun. I enjoyed his audiobook afterwards too.

@TrevorNoah was sooooo good. The thing I remember most about him is how adept he was in responding to a wide variety of questions from the audience. I was impressed.

There were many more – Peter Souza, Walter Isaacson, Scott Kelly, Alan Alda, Jane Goodall, Margot Lee Shetterly, David Sanger, Al Gore, Dave Barry – the list goes on. I feel very fortunate that Microsoft offers these opportunities.

+Msft Memories
Time for another favorite memory. Around June/July 2014, I was asked to join a new secret project. Going into it, I had absolutely no idea what it was about – not a clue.

It turned out to be the HoloLens project and we were required to keep everything about it secret. For about 7 months, until we announced the project in Jan 2015, I couldn’t breathe a word about Project Baraboo, not even to my wife.

The hard part was not to show any interest in anything related to holograms, even though we were all *very* interested in anything to do with holograms at that point. After the announcement, we all went out on our sports field and yelled “Holograms” since we could finally say it.

I joined the project thinking I would be writing documentation and coding up some samples. But soon they found out I made developer videos, so they asked me to make a few early videos to explain things to devs. And once I started making these videos, I never stopped.

So we made videos, in preparation for the launch of the product. It was a super exciting day in Jan 2015 when we finally told the world about HoloLens. We had kept the secret so the rest of the world was pretty surprised when @akipman said ‘holograms’ on the stage.

In the end, I scripted almost all the developer focused videos.

Our team also created all the videos for the Mixed Reality Academy courses:

docs.microsoft.com/windows/mixed-…

And we also did a few ‘Science of HoloLens’ videos. This script was particularly challenging. Kelly did an awesome job using visuals to explain the story.

Early on, we were given a tour of our Mixed Reality Capture Studios. I even played a small part in getting George Takei in as an Actiongram. You can check out the studio in this video (but our team didn't create this video).

I’ve gotten various ship-it gifts from different projects over the years. But I’m probably proudest of this one. Happy to have been part of this magical product.

+Msft memories - a few random things:

This COM+ tshirt was always one of my favorites
Love the @donbox "COM is love, baby" reference.

I've been to a few conferences/seminars/etc over the years.

Was excited to put together the video that demonstrated Kinect for Azure - Satya used it in his presentation last year.

One of my favorite pieces of swag - my HoloLens jacket.

So today is the big day - 25 years at Microsoft.

Our Social Amplification team surprised me with this animation. It warms my heart...or caused some sort of emotional reaction. :-)

https://twitter.com/WindowsDocs/status/1096067069924335616

Pretty wild journey for a kid from a small farm in Wisconsin.

Many thanks to the many people who helped me along the way - the whole list - parents, teachers, mentors, managers, colleagues, wife, and child - sincerely could not have done it without you.

And I got to order my 25 year crystal today, to add to the collection.

Finally, to celebrate, I'll spend the day filming some new One Dev Question videos. Coming soon to a social media channel near you.

Thanks for following along.

#MicrosoftLife

I've had this computer bag for about 23 of my 25 years at Microsoft. Got it free at some point. It was the perfect size-it held laptops, cables, snacks, pens, change, notes, business cards, swag, card readers, sim ejectors, etc. But it's done it duty-time to move on to a new bag.

+ Msft Memories:
Wrapping up this year long thread on my 25th anniversary at Microsoft, it occurs to me I didn’t mention how I got the job at Microsoft. Back in 1993, I was working as a contract programmer in the Minneapolis area.

I wasn’t very satisfied with my current employer and had started to look around a little bit. One day, a colleague of mine got a phone call from a Microsoft recruiter. Was he interested in joining Microsoft? No, but he knew someone who might be interested. So he put us in touch.

Within a short period of time, I interviewed at Anderson Consulting and Microsoft Consulting Services. Both places took their time in making a decision. I finally got an offer from Anderson Consulting but honestly was not that interested in working there.

In fact, during the interview process, one of the interviewers made it clear they weren’t that interested in working there either. So I called the Msft recruiter and said “I’ve got this other offer but I really want to work for you. Can we make this happen?” And it finally did.

So I was watching this Daily Show clip the other night and thought about people who opened doors for me. I’m certainly thankful to my colleague who passed on the Microsoft recruiters name to me. It certainly had a profound effect on my life.

https://twitter.com/TheDailyShow/status/1106384773457563649

And of course, I’ve had many other people open doors for me – my parents, teachers, managers, etc along the way. I hope to open even more doors for others.

#MicrosoftLife

(Just a reminder, you can read the complete thread unrolled here:)

threadreaderapp.com/thread/9827046…

I've kept my 25 years @ Microsoft thread pinned, waiting for a couple more pictures:

When you've been at Microsoft 25 years, you get your name engraved on a crystal that is then displayed at our Conference Center.

Happy to say that crystal is now being engraved.

And now the crystal is up!

This really is the end of this thread. Thanks for following along everyone.