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Front Page (Career) News: Opportunity Knocks; Your Correspondent Answers

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Don’t it always seem to hit you

Right when you think you can lay back easy?

          -- Front Page News, Bill Payne & Lowell George

For the past seven years, I’ve had one of the best jobs somebody in my line of work can have. Those of you who’ve perused the About page know I’ve been a Senior Applications Developer at Microsoft since before the millennium turned, devoted 100% to designing and building SQL Server-based solutions for use in both internal and customer-facing systems. It’s been a wonderfully fun and incredibly educational experience. The members of my team are as creative, dedicated, passionate, and talented a group as I’ve encountered in almost 30 years of work in this business.

If I could only tell you what I feel now
It's been so long inside of me

All the years that I've been trying
To stay in touch, to stay in line
Trying just to be myself, be myself
And no one else

It’s not an easy team to leave, and I wouldn’t be, except for an email I got from a gentleman named Greg Winston which said, in a nutshell, “have I got a job for you. ” Dialogue ensued, and it turned out he was right. I’m joining his new SQL Server Center of Excellence team as a Technology Architect on June 12.

Front page right through to back page
Have I got news for you

 

This job has so many great aspects that’s it’s tough to list them all. The team’s primary goal is to reduce Critical Situation support incidents for our SQL Server customers. We’ll be attacking this challenge on several fronts; among the position’s exciting aspects are the charter to drive product improvements and the opportunity to develop and deliver training through the Customer IT Fellowship program.

That’s right.. I’m going to be able to help customers directly! And I’m going to get to teach!

Oh, yeah.. And I’ll be able to walk to work.

As an old friend used to say, “it’s sorta kinda perfect.”

Memories are friends that you had

It’s so clear if you need to see

As I said at the outset, my current gig is a great job; the best one I’ve ever had in this line of work (I do occasionally wax nostalgic for my high school job in my best friend’s father’s delicatessen, but that’s another post on another blog (neither of which exist yet)). I would’ve thought that wild horses couldn’t drag me away (get well, Keith Richards), but Greg offered me an opportunity to work with SQL Server in a different way, and on a different level, on a new team that’s building a new business. Not to mention the whole customer-facing, teaching, walking to work thing. I couldn’t let the opportunity pass by.

My current team will prosper and thrive after I move on (remember Pond’s Tenth Law); they are a brilliant bunch building some very exciting tools. I’ll miss the camaraderie and inventiveness we shared.

At the same time, I’m looking forward to building a new team and a new business, and to sharing perhaps a different sort of technical insight with you as a result of my participation in that process.

(I’ll still be cranking code (a lot of it, actually J) for the next month, and if I stumble onto any tidbits of interest, I’ll post them here.)

          -wp

Comments

  • Anonymous
    January 01, 2003
    In the second of my annual indulgences , I’m “treating” you to a summary of my commuting life this year.

  • Anonymous
    January 01, 2003
    June is definitely milestone season in this neck of the woods. Not only is today the third anniversary

  • Anonymous
    January 01, 2003
    I'm goin' home And when I wanna go home I'm goin' mobile Well, I'm gonna find a home And we'll see how

  • Anonymous
    January 01, 2003
    When I first published Pond’s Laws, I promised it would be a living document.  Herewith is the first evidence.

  • Anonymous
    January 01, 2003
    If you live long enough and lead a certain sort of life, you end up writing a lot of correspondence that

  • Anonymous
    May 19, 2006
    Great news, Ward!  Congrats, and I hope you'll keep on blogging!

  • Anonymous
    June 07, 2006
    The comment has been removed

  • Anonymous
    June 13, 2006
    Thank you both, Adam and Rob.

  • Anonymous
    June 20, 2006
    The comment has been removed

  • Anonymous
    June 20, 2006

    Let's try that one more time...
    http://tinyurl.com/gr9r2

    :)

  • Anonymous
    June 20, 2006
    Thanks, Gary, for starting me on this journey..  and thanks for not taking offense at my characterizations here!

    I deny all knowledge of the vanity plate..  note that I left Wisconsin when the license plates there were still black on yellow.. :)