Matt’s Blog

So today we have a planning off-site which is actually in just another company building in a different part of town. So far about the only thing I’ve planned is how to move our group to this building as soon as possible because the offices are much nicer than the ones in our building.

I don’t think that you can consider something to be “off-site” unless you have to enter some funny password to get access to the wireless network. Or, better yet, no internet access regardless of funny passwords. Regardless the table always ends up looking like this anyways:

Ok, I lied. I actually have planned some things while I was here. Of particular note is how to stay awake given the volume of food provided. Seriously, they put out sausage, eggs, pancakes, and potatoes for breakfast and then expect us to actually focus on work?

An entertaining aside; a friend of mine sent me this post which seems to be based on the story of a MS employee or contractor who is *very* upset. Maybe he (she?) got up on the wrong side of the bed today, or perhaps he/she didn’t have a good breakfast today. Maybe he/she should have come to the offsite, I can guarantee that we did not have a bad breakfast.

So this week at The Empire® we have been working on a rather important intermediate milestone in my product (it’s going well thanks for asking) which means that there was a lot of pressure. Work pressure is one of my favorite things because, much like real pressure, it makes something very valuable out of what is essentially a pile of crap. Humor works in pretty much the same way so:

work pressure == humor (for large values of work pressure)

One of the traits that makes this happen is that work pressure takes what is would normally annoying and turns it into something that is a REALLY BIG DEAL. Take co-workers for example. Seriously I think people around here like making other people’s lives difficult. There’s some kind of perverse power in saying: “Behold! You will bend your work habits to my will! I’m taking the server down for an upgrade and there’s nothing you can do about it!”

Whatever. Usually you just log off and find something else to do while you wait. That or you get “workarounds” which is really just code for: “time-consuming normally unnecessary steps that might make the product barely usable.” But sometimes there is justice for the worker. Twice this week I get mails something like the following (and I’m paraphrasing):

From: team_A_serveradmin@theroot.ofallevill.com
To: alltheotherteams@theroot.ofallevil.com
Subject: Your Life Will Now Suck

Hi team,

Just letting you know that <critical-productivity-tool> will be in running in <obscure-configuration> so we can test <obscure-test-scenario> today. So … <details-about-how-this-will-make-your-life-suck> … thanks!

Allow me to interpret: “We need you to test our configuration for us, but you would probably never do it on your own, so we are going to make you do it.” Now this is something that happens from time to time and is an important, albeit annoying, part of the process here at The Empire®. But as I mentioned earlier, on a week where you are trying to deliver a major milestone “annoying” quickly becomes “REALLY BIG DEAL”. So it came as no surprise when… *Ding*

From: team_A_serveradmin@theroot.ofallevill.com
To: alltheotherteams@theroot.ofallevil.com
Subject: Re: Your Life Will Now Suck

Hi team,

Hey, so just go ahead and ignore the e-mail I sent out earlier, we’re gonna postpone to another time. Thanks!

Now I imagine there was a conversation in between those two e-mails, and it probably went something like this:

Boss: “So I saw your e-mail and there’s been a few complaints about the impact of your changes on productivity.”
Worker: “Yeah, well did you tell them to get out a straw and suck it up? Haha!”
Boss: “Um… no. Did you consider the release schedule when you planned your changes by chance?”
Worker: “Consider other people’s needs? Yeah, that’s not really my style.”
Boss: “…”
Worker: “So I should change it back.”
Boss: “Yeah, you should probably do that.”

A while ago my grad school advisor was telling me as story about a meeting he had with some government agency. As a student in a civil engineering program nearly all the projects that we were involved with dealt with the government in some form either directly as a client, or as a stakeholder. This meant that not only did we have to meet with various government agencies frequently, but often times the forward progress or even continued existence of our projects relied heavily on the outcome of those meetings.

Now back to the story, my advisor explained that in this case he was meeting with a representative of some state department of transportation for several hours discussing some aspect of a project they were working on. Remarkably, for the entire duration of the several-hour meeting one of the representative’s co-workers sat nearby at his immaculately organized desk doing nothing save reading the paper. The representative my advisor was meeting with remarked, from behind his rather cluttered desk, that most of his fellow civil servants spent their days in pursuits similar to that of his paper-reading colleague.

Based on this my advisor made a rather valuable observation: If you want to get anything done in a large organization (governmental or otherwise) you need to find the person with the messiest desk. In my, admittedly limited, experience I’ve found this observation to be quite true. I call this phenomenon the concept of the “messiest desk.”

Although I would add at this point that having the “messiest desk” does not always mean that your desk is particularly disorganized. For example, I am the kind of person who is pretty obsessive about cleanliness so my desk isn’t always messy, but it’s rarely clear. As the important priorities pile up there’s a lot of ongoing work, some of which has to be shelved temporarily while I focus on more critical tasks.

Not to say that organization isn’t important. I think every successful person with a “messy desk” would say that they could easily find any particular item on demand if needed. Clearly if your desk is so messy that you can’t find anything effectively then you aren’t being productive. In addition, this doesn’t apply to people who have a lot of useless kitsch in their workspace. The “mess” does not consist of stupid crap, but the elements of ongoing work.

The theory also applies if you don’t even have a desk to begin with. It could cover online or electronic workspaces, or physical workspaces like workbenches, garages or shop floors. Having a “messy desk” indicates that you have a lot of irons in the fire, and that fulfilling important priorities is more important than having your workspace perfectly organized. Rarely do you have time to do both.

So here’s what I look for in a messy desk (you could call them the “traits of the messy desk”) which indicate that a person within a given organization is a good contact to have:

• It isn’t just a mess, there’s at least some sense of organization.
• The mess does not impact productivity.
• The mess is predominately composed of work items (tools, files, reports).
• The elements of the mess are not only work items but current work items, not archived dead project files from 20 years ago.
• The mess is the result of ongoing work using the latest technology feasible, not the result of a refusal to join the 21st century.
• The mess does not smell, that’s just gross.

So what are your thoughts? Do you have a messy desk? If so, what do you look for in a mess that indicates that it’s more than just a mess? If not, then what do you look for as a sign of value in a workspace?

This: http://www.readwriteweb.com/readwritehire/2008/12/microsoft-project-team.php

Made me laugh this morning. Although it is all true, I find it funny that anyone would care that much about me moving to work for Microsoft. That, and being quoted on a news site is cool, but also strangely creepy.

So after a marathon effort over the weekend and early into Monday morning, I have finally finished my thesis!

The following policies governing work are going into immediate effect:

• I am no longer working past 6 PM in the evening.
• I will no longer work on Sundays (or Saturdays… probably).
• I will no longer stay up working until 4, 6, or 7 AM and only get 3-4 hours of sleep.
• I will no longer be completely mentally and physically exhausted.

I can confidently say that the completion of my thesis represents the most effort that I have ever put into a single task that I can ever remember. While the data collection effort and experimentation started two years ago, the bulk of the written work was carried out this semester. I started creating bits and pieces at the start of this semester, but it wasn’t until spring break that writing began in earnest. I spent the vast majority of that week (3/16-3/20) tied to my computer hammering out section after section. I constructed the initial draft the following week and got it into the hands of my advisor for initial comments. While he was looking at it I continued work, adding sections and additional analysis, up through Thursday (3/26) when I sent out the “final” draft for comments to my advisor and to the proof-reading committee I had drafted conscripted asked nicely to help out.

What amazed me through the latter part of the effort was the shear size of the work. When I had combined all the individual sections into one the document was nearly 200 pages long and contained close to 35,000 words. This made some things interesting. For example, the process of going through the document with spellcheck could take several minutes to complete.

I didn’t get comments back from my advisor until Saturday night, and only for the first two-thirds of the paper. Combined with the changes I was getting from my proof-reading committee at times it felt like I was completely re-writing entire pages of the document. Work continued through Sunday, something I usually try to avoid, and after a late-afternoon meeting I had the final comments in hand to respond to. Those corrections, and the miscellaneous clean-up tasks to get the document formatted for submission (no small task given the size of the document) kept me up until 4 AM Monday morning (4/6). The next morning, after gathering signatures and submitting the approval form and the thesis itself, I was done.

The arrival at “done” is, frankly, rather abrupt. It’s as if I’ve gone from working at 100 miles per hour to 8. This will take a while to sink in, the idea that I can go home after class or working in the lab, or even *gasp* take an entire day off to do nothing. Actually, after months of nagging concern that I need to be working on some aspect of the thesis I seem to have developed a bit of a habit. It will take a while for me to be able to look at a calendar and not try to figure out how many more days I have to work until my thesis is due.

I still do have things to do, but nothing even close to the magnitude of what I’ve been doing for the past several weeks. I hope to get the rest of my outstanding class work done this week actually, and the Cobb County report can easily be handled during normal working hours.

Anyways, it’s done. I keep saying that to myself, it just sounds so… wonderful. Once it gets posted to oscar I’m going to Taco Mac for drinks. But now, I’m just ready to start feeling human again.

A few months ago I began searching for a job. I cast a pretty wide net because I wasn’t quite sure what I was interested in doing after I finished grad school. As the weeks passed the number of companies under consideration dwindled to a handful. I was careful not to “rank” the opportunities as I wasn’t sure where I’d end up getting offers and what the terms of those offers would be. It wasn’t until the past few days that I actually had all the offers in hand and was able to objectively consider where I really wanted to work. Now, after a great deal of prayerful consideration I’ve decided that I will be accepting the offer to move to Seattle and work for Microsoft.

I’ll be working in the Program Manager role on the team developing Microsoft Project. Project is a program that is part of the Office suite and is used for managing well… projects. The Program Manager role is basically a project manager so essentially I will be a project manager for a project writing software that helps manage projects. Confused? Don’t worry so am I. The bottom line is that I’ll be managing the development of features for an application that’s used by thousands of people across the globe. Awesome.

If you had told me when I started this process that I would be moving across the country to work for Microsoft after school I would have thought you were completely nuts. My degree is not in Computer Science, I had no interest in moving out of Atlanta, and there was no way I could see getting an interview (much less a job) with Microsoft. But here I am. I actually approached the Microsoft booth at the career fair on a whim, kind of a “what if.” I never expected to get a first-round interview, and certainly not a second-round, on-site interview. The entire process has been so odd that I really can’t credit anyone but God for the way things have turned out.

Many have asked my reasons for going, I will enumerate them here. As I’ve considered my options I determined that I can categorize my interest in Microsoft into personal and professional categories. The professional reasons relate largely to the job itself and the opportunities that it affords, although some of my personal goals are better met by the professional traits of the company as you will see below:

Autonomy

Microsoft operates under the principle that they hire smart people, give them responsibility, and then allow them to do their jobs. There’s no monitoring or over-the-shoulder watching. They trust that you know what you’re doing, that’s why they hired you. Now an argument could be made that I snuck by the smart people filter; and maybe so. But I’ve already accepted their offer so HA! In all seriousness though, this is perhaps the most important reason that I’ve accepted the job. They give me a chance to have immediate ownership of features and development items and they trust me to develop the mechanisms required to make things happen. I’ll have the chance for both immediate responsibility, and full control over my eventual success or failure.

Technological Tinkering

Microsoft encourages its employees to tinker with the latest technology. First, they dog food most of their products in the production environment. This means that I’ll be running Windows 7 and Office 14 on my work computers right-away. I have the potential to be running nightly builds if I wanted to. The idea of being on the absolute cutting-edge of software makes me very excited. I have always loved trying things out and playing with alphas and betas on my own time, and now I’m going to get paid to do it. Second, Microsoft makes all its software available to employees. This means that I can download and play with anything Microsoft makes. This goes right to my propensity to envision new ideas for software interaction and productivity by allowing me free access to what would otherwise be potentially very expensive software. Again taking something I love doing (playing with software) and paying me to do it. And lastly, Microsoft encourages employees to play with other company’s technology. Restated: I can have an iPhone. This is great for two reasons. First, they recognize that I am an individual and should be allowed to do what I want, not blindly support the company products regardless of how good (or bad) they are. And second, they recognize that not all of their offerings are the best out there and by encouraging their employees to explore they can learn what the best is and how to beat it.

Learning

Similar to tinkering, as an employee I’ll have access to all of Microsoft’s technical documentation and educational resources. I love reading about tools and learning new things and this is a great free resource for me to do just that, everything from project management to the latest on Microsoft’s new code syntax development. For example see: F#

Flexible Scheduling

Someday, I would like to have a family. And until then I plan on enjoying lots of fun activities at many different times of the day. Either way, I need to have a job that’s somewhat flexible. This job gives me that. People come in at all hours and leave at all hours. And sometimes people come in and leave for a while and come in again for a bit then leave…. you get the idea. One of the best parts of my job in grad school was the flexibility to get things done when I was most effective. Clearly I’m expected to get work done, and I have no problem with that. As a PM I’ll have lots of meetings that will make my schedule less flexible than some, but the ability to work at different times depending on my needs is awesome.

Compensation

Although I can’t say much about this for many reasons, let’s just say that it’s very satisfactory and will support many of my other professional and personal goals.

I also have several reasons for moving to Seattle and working for Microsoft that are of a more personal nature.

Mars Hill

When I moved to Atlanta from Colorado one of the toughest obstacles for me was finding a church that provided authentic community and good spiritual teaching. It took me nearly 6 months. In Seattle it will take me 5 minutes. I’ve been listening to Mark Driscoll for almost 2 years now ever since my sister recommended him after her time in Seattle. While he’s not perfect, he provides rock-solid theological teaching and effective practical advice through his ministry in Seattle. Couple Mark with the amazing community they have built at Mars Hill and you have a church that I can’t wait to attend. Stylistically Mars Hill is very different from Buckhead, and that will take some getting used to but the bottom line is that I have no concerns about my future spiritual growth or finding a good Christian community to take part in.

Future Growth

When I moved to Atlanta to go to school I experienced perhaps my most effective period of personal, professional, and spiritual growth. I was forced to meet new people, experience a new culture and learn a new roadway network among other things. I think the move to Seattle will be similar in many aspects including the difficulty with which this growth was accomplished.
Given my choice to move I have begun taking stock of all the things I will be leaving behind. I do this not to promote depression, but so that no one can claim that I’m not fully accounting for the costs of this transition.

I will miss my friendships the most. Over the 6 years that I’ve been in Atlanta I’ve been blessed with an awesome group of people to “do life” with. My friends have pushed me and stretched me and helped me to become the person that I am today. I will miss all the guys at Theta Xi, the guys from my freshman dorm, the guys from Buckhead Church, and of course all the fine southern ladies that I’ve met in those, and other, contexts.

I’ll miss Buckhead Church. I have really enjoyed the rock concert-like loud music and lights and the practical and effective teaching by Andy. The community in both the college group and the church at large has been awesome. I’ll miss volunteering at Sharp Top Cove next year and I’ll miss working in KidStuf like I used to do when the church was still on Roswell Road.

I’ll miss Georgia Tech. Particularly the football team. It seems cruel that I have to leave just as things are getting interesting, but I hope to be back consistently for the UGA game and possibly others. And I’m sure given time I’ll miss other aspects of Georgia Tech although right now I cannot wait to get the hell out of here.

I’ll miss y’all. Both the phrase and the people I’ve used it to describe. Additionally I’ll miss “might could”, “fixin’ to” and “reckon”.

I will miss Jason’s Deli, Chick-fil-a, Junior’s, and Mary Mac’s. I will not miss The Varsity.

There’s probably a lot more things that I’ll miss, and I’ll probably write more about those things and the things I’ve already mentioned at a later date. Some things probably won’t become clear until I actually leave. But the conclusion is that sometimes we have to give up good things to pursue great things. I’m looking forward to my new job and in the meantime I’ll have to make sure to enjoy those around me while they still are.

Well, I finally registered for my last semester at Georgia Tech. Here’s what it’s going to look like:

Yes, that’s only seven hours. Now granted, this schedule only includes class, so there’s bound to be a few more appointments in there, but overall I’m really happy with the fact that there is no concrete reason for me to even get out of bed on Wednesday or Thursday. Not that I’m going to lay around all day, but the thought is nice. I’ll need a lot of that time to work on the thesis.

I’m also only taking 7 hours (2 classes) which means that I should have a relatively small amount of assignment work throughout the semester. I’ve found that the volume of assignments corresponds more closely to the number of classes you take than the number of hours.

Now I know there are those of you out there who are pissed that I’m only having to go to one class per day, and only three days of the week at that. So I’ll leave you with the picture of my classes from last spring, when I earned my reduced spring 2009 schedule by almost dying:

That doesn’t even include the outside appointments, which were extensive.

Some might argue that I should have spread out the classes over both semesters. My response to those people is simple: I remind them that, next semester, I don’t have to get out of bed on Wednesdays or Thursdays.

Finally nailed down the academic schedule for the my second to last semester at Tech:

Still have to nail down my Planning Studio, the CP department is being a pain on that one. I’m not too wild about the 3-hour PM classes, but I’ll probably drop one of them if I can get the studio. Overall I’m pleased with the way things turned out. Class early will make sure I’m out of bed and then I’ll have the rest of the day to work on stuff.