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Josh Ledgard and Kevin Briody have some good Microsoft tips. [via Furrygoat]

Here is my top 10. Many of these were borrowed from other great folks.

1. Process is no substitute for thinking

Don’t use process as an excuse, or get cornered into a hole because of process. If you use your brain, you’ll find it’s sometimes amazingly powerful at accomplishing hard things.

2. Get out of your office

Seriously, get out of you chair, walk into the hallway and realize the full potential of being located near your entire team. Resist the urge to send them mail when you can just write it down somewhere and bring it up the next time you see them. On top of that, get to know your team. You’ll find you have an amazing set of co-workers who want to ship a kick ass product with you.

3. Use your product (the one your customers will)

There is no excuse for not knowing everything you can about your product. Don’t get stuck in a silo. The most successful folks at Microsoft have an amazing amount of breadth and depth to the product. If all you have is depth, you are going to limit your potential. When some one external to your team asks you a question about your product, try and asnwer it youself. Don't just reply CC'ing the person who owns that aspect of the product. You'll save an email, and learn something if you do.

Finally, you are shipping this thing to people who expect to use it. If you don't, how do you know you are shipping the right product?

4. Fix things that are broken rather than complain about them being broken. Actions speak better than your complaining.

I can’t tell you how much I value people who don’t ask to fix something, they just take the initiative and make the team’s life better. Fix one broken thing a year and you’ll be amazed at the results.

5. Make hard problem look easy. Don’t make easy problems look hard.

If you make a really hard problem look easy you are a rock star. If you make a really easy problems look hard, then you are making my life (or some one else’s) harder than it needs to be. I have my own problems, don’t bring me more of them.

6. Use the right communication tool for the job.

You need to learn how to communicate to the different people at Microsoft. You can’t talk to the planners or the marketing folk the same way you talk to you developers and testers. If you VP is on a thread, don’t reply with some useless thread propagating crap. Take discussions offline, meet with people, GET OUT OF YOUR OFFICE, and use email sparingly. Think twice, I mean three times about adding anyone to a thread. Once you do they are stuck on that thread from hell till it dies a few days later.

7. Learn to make mistakes.

Microsoft is amazingly forgiving about making mistakes. Software development is an Art, not a science. Try new things, go for the gold, be big and bold. You will screw up, don’t lament, learn and move on. Don’t make the same mistake twice.

8. Keep things simple.

Don’t over complicate things because you can.

9. Add value all the time

You are at the world’s largest software company that has some of the best minds and resources in the industry. Try and add value every day (by thinking). Help your team, co-workers, and other teams be the best they can.

10. Use their product

Make it a point to dogfood other team’s products. Get on their discussion or dogfood DLs. Try their new stuff, give them good feedback and bugs. You’ll get to know new people and personalities in the company, and you’ll be helping Microsoft ship better software. Microsoft has an amazing culture of getting and giving good candid feedback. Don’t miss out on the opportunity to help make another team’s stuff better.