Me: I live in Silicon Valley with my wife, child and cat. I have worked at Microsoft since I graduated from College, both in the Macintosh Business Unit on products such as Outlook Express, Entourage, IE, and Virtual PC and in Windows Live on Hotmail, Calendar and People. I am currently a Principal Lead Program Manager on the Windows Live Social Networking team. I basically manage a team of Program Managers responsible for delivering features to support our web and client applications. I've been blogging since 2001 and like to play around with .NET in my spare time working on projects such as dasBlog (the blog that powers this site) and Send to SmugMug (an application for uploading photos to SmugMug). I blog about a number of technology and productivity related topics.
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© Copyright 2010, Omar Shahine
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Chris Pratley has this little gem in a series on Word that he is writing. He really captures why I am so drawn to the company and why I have always enjoyed working here.
"The idea that I would need "permission" to have a blog is a little humorous to me. Microsoft has always had as one of its strengths that it gives enormous freedom to its employees. We don't have time cards, no one tracks our hours, and in general we are given a lot of responsibility. As long as we deliver results, it doesn't matter if you come in at 2pm and don't wear shoes (both of which I do occasionally, although less often than I used to). In a way, the environment in any product group is more like a startup than a big company. We have small teams of dedicated people who don't need rules and oversight to make them perform. In fact, if such bureaucracy did start to creep in, the best people would simply leave - it wouldn't be fun anymore. Microsoft is consistently rated as one of the top places to work in America - even though our salaries are only a little above average and the stock has not gone anywhere exciting for several years. The reason is that the environment is great, the benefits are great, and the typical passion, commitment, competence and intelligence of the people around you everyday is exhilarating, frankly. I mean, I LOVE my job. What could be better than working through tough technical problems with smart people everyday, working with customers to understand their needs and then delivering what they asked for (take a look at OneNote's SP1 - that was a tremendously fulfilling release for our team thanks to the users out there who have told us how much it improves their use of the product, if not their lives). Not to mention designing and building products that are used by hundreds of millions of people the world over. If you can make those even a little bit better, the impact you have is enormous."
"The idea that I would need "permission" to have a blog is a little humorous to me. Microsoft has always had as one of its strengths that it gives enormous freedom to its employees. We don't have time cards, no one tracks our hours, and in general we are given a lot of responsibility. As long as we deliver results, it doesn't matter if you come in at 2pm and don't wear shoes (both of which I do occasionally, although less often than I used to).
In a way, the environment in any product group is more like a startup than a big company. We have small teams of dedicated people who don't need rules and oversight to make them perform. In fact, if such bureaucracy did start to creep in, the best people would simply leave - it wouldn't be fun anymore. Microsoft is consistently rated as one of the top places to work in America - even though our salaries are only a little above average and the stock has not gone anywhere exciting for several years. The reason is that the environment is great, the benefits are great, and the typical passion, commitment, competence and intelligence of the people around you everyday is exhilarating, frankly. I mean, I LOVE my job. What could be better than working through tough technical problems with smart people everyday, working with customers to understand their needs and then delivering what they asked for (take a look at OneNote's SP1 - that was a tremendously fulfilling release for our team thanks to the users out there who have told us how much it improves their use of the product, if not their lives). Not to mention designing and building products that are used by hundreds of millions of people the world over. If you can make those even a little bit better, the impact you have is enormous."