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Randy Holloway at Microsoft

Blogging from the field.
Microsoft- First Week Impressions

Here are my first week observations, in no particular order:

  1. Microsoft has a VAST amount of information available.  Information overload has taken on a new meaning for me.
  2. The people are great.  Everyone that I've met seems to be bright, articulate, and motivated.  The people I'm interacting with on a daily basis seem to genuinely care about their work, and there is a lot of positive energy in the teams I'm working in.
  3. The internal tools are amazing.  I was thinking of the “cobbler's children have no shoes“ saying when I first started, but nothing could be further from the truth.
  4. This is a huge organization with a lot of moving parts, and I'm working in the field.  Getting up to speed and familiar with the basic structure at a macro level will take quite a while.  I think it will be an ongoing challenge.
  5. The competitive landscape Microsoft is facing is pretty tough.  There is a lot of work ahead of us, and I haven't met anyone here that sees it otherwise.

So far, the work has exceeded my expectations.  If you want my contact information on the inside, leave a comment and I'll get back to you.

Posted: Monday, April 26, 2004 5:24 PM by RandyHolloway

Comments

Chris Stewart said:

Can you comment any further about the internal tools?
# April 26, 2004 9:35 PM

Kirk Allen Evans said:

You can find out quite a bit about how Microsoft uses IT internally [1].

When I first joined about a month ago, people likened it to "SharePoint gone wrong", meaning that there are so many SharePoint sites with so much information that it almost overwhelming [2]. There are product team sites that have information about the products, individual sites where people post some of their resources like whitepapers and PowerPoint decks, and other sites that are anywhere in between. For instance, there is an internal site, MSMarket, that is used for procurement [3].


[1] http://www.microsoft.com/technet/itsolutions/msit/default.mspx
[2] http://www.microsoft.com/technet/itsolutions/msit/infowork/sharetwp.mspx
[3] http://www.microsoft.com/technet/itsolutions/msit/infowork/msmproc.mspx
# April 27, 2004 12:54 PM

Randy H. said:

I can't explain this any better than Kirk has.

Basically, there is an internal web site for every product, team, and person in the company. There are massive amounts of data available for analysis, reporting, and research. And the HR tools for new hires make it very easy. There is very little paperwork to complete, and everything you need is available in an electronic format.
# April 27, 2004 5:19 PM
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