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Mentoring, Meetings, and Merrymaking

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More work on the project. I finally figured out how to get the master page for the website working on my test server, and am in the process of getting the first page of the wizard hooked up.

When I started this, I was worried that it’d be a boring site with nothing to write. :)  I keep a word document open throughout the day, and add to it whenever I get the chance or something pops up that I think should go in. I also have a text file with future ideas to pull from if things get slow. Which they probably will thin out as I exhaust my reserve of stuff to pass along and things get repetitive… hopefully I’ll come across newer stuff to pass on by then. For now, I thought I’d put a bit more structure in these by adding subheadings.

Education & Mentoring

Microsoft has a number of good programs for improving yourself. There’s education reimbursement, of course. Lots of books & classes are available, as well as archived presentations (such as Mandelbrot’s visit). They have a bunch of visiting speakers (such as Daniel Wilson, who was great, and the aforementioned Mandelbrot, I’ve met Neal Stephenson, attended William Gibson’s talk, and many more). They’ll give talks on Xbox 360 architecture, the latest advances in lossless compression, and even have visiting chefs Chef Thierry Rautureau. 

Yet another source is the Microsoft mentoring program. You plug in your biography, interests, and goals… and then it matches you with several mentors to choose from. Once you have, there are materials available to track your progress as you learn from the individual.

Yesterday, after my post, I had my second mentor meeting with David K. He’s been with Microsoft for seventeen years. I’m really looking forward to seeing what he brings to the table. He has a ton of experiences, and our first two meetings have been of the get-to-know-each-other variety. Lots of great stories were swapped. January I’ll be researching areas of weakness that I think he could help me address, and we’ll work on them.

I also meet with Steve S., a developer that just moved over to the Xbox group in the Advanced Technology Group. He’s one of the people developers run to for answers to tough game development and optimization questions, a very cool move for him. Our mentor relationship, while official in that we were matched, has been more laid back. We talk about the state of the game industry, and I’ve worked on a C# game under his guidance.

Team meetings

Most teams meet once a week to give everyone an opportunity to catch up on what’s going on. Most groups have a group meeting four to twelve times a year (I believe we will have them once a month). Organizations usually have an “all-hands” meeting 1-4 times a year. And the company has a company-wide meeting once a year (with occasional broadcast meetings from the executives to address current issues).

In my (small) team there are four people:

  • Mike M. is our manager & developer lead, tasked with identifying the work we’ll be doing, handling time issues, working on Developer specs, and more.

  • Adam N. is a developer working on competitive & internal analysis (he gets to play with different toys to see how they stack up to each other, and then has to write detailed reports about his findings. His work on WinFX vs. Win32 resulted in a fascinating, thick report.

  • James J. is out on Paternity leave. He was originally working on the submission tool, and a few other things. Haven’t met him here yet, so I’m not sure exactly what he’s worked on. It is a small world: I only found out after I got the job that James worked here… You see, He, David Z., and I used to have lunches every month (David being our mutual friend). Can’t wait until he gets back.

  • Marc W. is a developer working on the Build of Materials editor, as well as a some reporting tools. He’s been the go-to guy to get development projects done, and has helped out a number of people tremendously.

Today Marc W. demonstrated the Build of Materials editor that he’s working on. Some background: the build team has over 60 tables in a database keeping track of everything needed to create the SDK setup files. (it looks like) A new database is created for every build (each version of the SDK, including daily builds). Now, they’ve never had a UI to manage it! So every change that is requested has a bug filed, a file attached to the bug, and then someone manually changed the database records through Enterprise Manager. Good Grief!

So, Marc is working on a UI to make editing the BoM much easier. It’s coming along nicely, and we all brainstormed a bit to provided feedback and ideas. It’ll be using a change-list model, which will allow pending changes to be vetted by authorized personnel before the changes are made to the database. Adam and I gave a quick status report… I’ll have to demonstrate my project when I get back from winter vacation.

Party time!

Looks like there is a big party today; “The 9th Annual DevDiv Build Lab Huge Holiday Party.” It’s a “potluck,” and someone usually brings Jell-O Shooters, something I’ve always been curious to try. “Wednesday, consider what you might be able to contribute to the party. It could be anything from a favorite family recipe, Subway's late-night day-old specials, stuff that falls out of the vending machines when you turn them upside down, or something you learned in chemistry class while experimenting with ingredients purchased from the Washington State Liquor Board. Tuesday, bring it in.”

I’ve heard, second-hand, that management decided to merged the DevDiv holiday party with the ship party earlier this year, which happened before I came aboard. So, the Build Lab party will be bigger than usual, as it is taking the place of the normal holiday party. Should be interesting.

I did get to go to both the SQL Server holiday party at the Pacific Science Center (I was happy), and the ship party at Whistler, Canada for a weekend, so I’m not bummed about missing the DevDiv parties… I’ll have to chat about the SQL parties another time.

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