day in the life
Day in the Life - Today was the Windows XP ship party. They were setting up tents and gear in the soccer fields adjacent to my building last night; this morning I arrived to find the festivities already underway. I was busy taking advantage of the productivity that comes from having everyone else out of your hair, so I caught most of the action over streaming media, or in the noise carrying through the air to my building. A bunch of VIPs from the hardware companies were presented gold CDs (in silver briefcases suitable for espionage) by Bill Gates and Jim Allchin, then climbed aboard helicopters and flew off, presumably to begin preloading Windows XP on all of their machines. The guy from HP was pretty cool; he made some comment about “reclaiming the PC mojo” and his enthusiasm was contagious. I bet he could really pump up the crowd if given a chance. All of the ceremonial stuff was wrapped up by around noon, and then the party began. When I left campus around 6pm, the party was still going strong. The speakers were pounding out electronic dance music, people were getting their drink on, riding some rides, playing games, and hanging out. Seattle has finally had some rain over the past week and recovered a bit from this summer’s drought, and today things cleared up just in time for the event. It was some much-needed rest and recreation to help recharge those guys before they dig in and push datacenter server out the door.
I’m pretty far from celebrating a ship right now. My latest assignment got final approval just a few days ago, and now I have to get the first beta out by the end of October. It’s a bit unique (for me) because this is a completely new project, so there is absolutely no existing infrastructure in place. That means I have to get a new build tree, get daily builds up and running, get setups built, figure out how to organize the documentation, get the testing team going, get the right bug databases set up, and the list goes on. And of course there is the small issue of writing the specs and getting the code written. The really fun part of all of this is that PMs at Microsoft have no direct power. All of the stuff that has to get done will have to be done by people who do not report to me, but I am the one who has to take responsibility for success or failure of the overall project. About two years ago, when I was working as a dev lead, I would come home and complain to my wife, “That PM is like a nagging housewife!”. He was quite subtle in his nagging, and never rude or malicious — but he was absolutely unrelenting. In fact, the best PMs are like nagging housewives. I like to imagine that the team secretly appreciates the nagging, and realizes that the whole household would end up in disarray if I wasn’t constantly henpecking to make sure that the garbage gets taken out and the dishes washed. I also worry alot that I might forget to nag about something, and then when it doesn’t get done, the whole team gets let down and it’s my fault.
Besides the XP launch, the other big news on campus is that the interns are leaving to go back to their universities. Few people outside the company realize how much key software is written (and tested) by interns. The interns often are given projects that are more “experimental”, and while these carry lower risk of putting Microsoft out of business, they often turn into some of the cooler features that get shipped. And at 26, I’m finally slowing down enough to appreciate the energy and enthusiasm these interns have. But we are not just losing the interns; it feels like everyone is trying to squeeze in vacations during the last few months of sunlight in Seattle (after October, it is 7 months of rain). So it’s going to be a real challenge getting things done these next few months.