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Sweet Fifteen

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On March 4, 1991 I arrived at New Employee Orientation here at Microsoft and thus started my first day as a Microsoft employee.  That means that last Saturday marked my 15 year anniversary with the company which is a pretty rare thing around here.  In addition they started a new program this year were major milestones (5, 10, 15, 20, and 25 years) are recognized with an interesting service award.  Here's a photo of the one I received and is the first one I have seen:

 

Click to see a bigger image. 

Sorry about the quality...I used my cameraphone and forgot to take the protective cover off (and today I left my phone at home).  It probably speaks to our society that everyone who sees it immediately says, "Wow...you could kill someone with that!"

Quite often people recognize anniversaries around here w/ a pound of m&ms for each year they've been here.  I don't need that many m&m's sitting that close to me. But here are a few notable moments from my msft career:

First Msft Job: Supporting Lan Manager 2.0c.

Closest Run-In w/ BillG: Bill used to come and talk to our support organization about once a year when I first started.  I had an opportunity to shake his hand once, but there was a big crowd so I didn't bother.

Biggest Historical Moment: I was leant to MSDN to write the ISAPI listener for the initial SOAP Toolkit sample.  It was Msft's first SOAP implementation.

Children when I started at Msft: 2

Children now: 7

Number of current employees I interviewed: I would guess somewhere around 50...it's quite interesting to see where you run into those familiar faces over the years.

Biggest Msft Big Wigs I have worked with: Brian Valentine used to come answer phones in support once in awhile when I first started.  I worked pretty closely w/ David Treadwell when Winsock 2.0 was coming out.  I vaguely remember Kevin Johnson when he worked in support.

Coolest Technical Ah ha moment:  One of the PDCs leading up to the NT release when they introduced the idea of completion ports.

Most obscure technologies I have dealt with: There was a time when I was the guy who did all the developer support for DLC...an archaic network protocol that basically lets you fiddle w/ the ethernet (or token ring, or arcnet) packets directly.  That was back before this new fangled TCP/IP stuff quite took off.  Another technology I supported was MIFST which was our OFX server platform for awhile.  OFX is a protocol that MS Money and Quicken used (and I think still do use) to talk to banks.

Number of PDCs I have attended: I've lost track: most of them

Buildings I have had offices in: 6

Managers: 14

Publications I have Written for: MSJ (Microsoft Systems Journal), MIND (I was in the inaugural issue), MSDN Magazine, MSDN Online.  Running Microsoft Internet Information Server 4.0 (MSPress book).  I also wrote for the NT Developer's Journal and some other networking magazine before that.

Favorite API: WNetAddConnection2...you can use it to test security credentials, to test network connectivity, to establish a security context with a server and avoid multiple NTLM handshakes (ok...I used it before Kerberos was established), and even to check if you have network connectivity installed.  Joe Flannigan and I have a running joke that when in doubt, you should always call WNetAddConnection2.  It's even a tasty dessert topping.

Favorite LAN Manager functionality that still exists to this day:  You can still do amazing things with the NET.EXE command line utility.

I've been writing this post off and on for about 3 days now so enough reminiscing.  Back to work. :-)

   -Matt

Comments

  • Anonymous
    March 27, 2006
    Congrats on making it 15 years, Matt.

    As far as obscure technologies, I'm glad you worked on OFX and MSFT. I just wish I hadn't. ;) OFX is still in use at American Express for sure, but they switched away from msft to a Java implementation (gasp!), partly because we could never really nail down the problem. Of course this failure to identify the true cause was in no way related to you. Your input was invaluable, and I'm sure many others are as thankful as I that you have been at MS all these years to help out when things go south.

    Thanks again, and I hope the next 15 years as as interesting for you as the last 15.

    Tim Faust

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