elizabeth grigg - the other fourth meal

Lots of people are scared to move forward with anything that could be misinterpreted as a privacy risk. This fear is reinforced if they go to the lawyers and say "we want to do this" and the lawyers say "you can't, we'll be sued." What the lawyers don't understand is that privacy is a PR problem, not a legal problem. I'll explain.

Hundreds of years ago (don't you love it when explanations go back that far, and take on a condescending tone to boot), a guy named John Locke invented the concept of the social contract. Governments are obligated to their citizens to provide certain protections (police, school, hospital) in exchange for those citizens giving up certain rights (the right to litter, the right to speed, etc). This is a social contract, and is sealed in place by laws and courts.

Customers have a similar contract with the companies they puchase things from. At the essence, I give up the right to keep $15.00 in my bank account, and Amazon gives up the right to keep a certain CD in their inventory. There is something more subtle going on too when you look at the exchange of information, which is extroardinarily hard to establish value for. You could argue that it is so useful to Amazon as a marketing tool to know both my zip code and what music I like, that they should pay ME for that information. However, that is not the custom, so here we are, steeped in tradition of cash for goods provided.

When a company comes under enhanced scrutiny about privacy, they have created the impression that they have not provided a reasonable exchange of goods or value compared to the value of the personal information the customer gives up. Note the use of "created the impression." This does not mean that anyone has broken the law, or that anyone will or will not win in court over this type of incident. It just means there was a disparity of customer expectation. Listening to lawyers, who will only advise on whether or not someone can sue someone else, will not improve the rough relationship companies have had with their customers ever since the information age began. In fact, to improve the situation, we need to listen less to our lawyers and more to our customers, our PR people, and the press.

The fact is, if we present a reasonable return of goods or services in exchange for personally identifiable information, we will meet and exceed customer expectations and allow that service to innovate, evolve and expand. We can't put our heads in the sand just because there's a zip code in the IP packet, and assume everyone will think we're bad guys. The fact is, if we're respectful and generous, and not hard of hearing, we'll do just fine.

If you get to a situation where you have lawyers telling you to abandon something you know is a good idea, try the following:
1) Get a second opinion. Do you think you'll be raked over the coals? Ask David Pogue. Ask Walt Mossberg. Ask Richard Smith. If they're on your side, you'll be fine.
2) Provide a service. This means concentrate on providing something really valuable to the person giving up the info. A free CD is a good thing. Advanced file management is a good thing. A customized ad is not a good thing. Use common sense.
3) Make sure your work is opt-in. This should trump anything the lawyers have to say about it. If the customers go and check the box, and fill in the info, then nothing has happened by accident and you're covered.

This entire issue is becoming extremely relevant as all our media goes digital, and all our work goes informational. I just hope we don't stop innovating because no one has figured out how to inject common sense into the privacy equation.

Posted by Elizabeth Grigg at 05:35 PM | Permalink

It's like, the beginning of some video game where you're this little tyke decked out in a skirt with a backpack, and you start wandering around. Then, BLAM! Dragon! You should have gone to the village merchant first to get some weapons cause now you're toast.

You'd think after two days of studying AND the purchase of a $44 book I'd know the difference between sharepoint portal server and windows sharepoint services. Then there's sharepoint team services. The only think I know for sure, becuase all the documentation is quite firm on this, is that the similarities of the names is completely coincidental and do not begin to illustrate the vast differences between the products. Okay, so they're different. How about some useful info?

I will finish out my week happy if I can figure out how to install a simple RSS viewer on a sample sharepoint site. This is a window that would display some soft of dynamic content (yes, from a weblog even) on a team site internally here at MS. I got pretty far with feedreader, but DUH it doesn't contain an exe or any obvious next step. The readme points in a direction of some other executable that doesn't exist on my box (stsadm.exe) which leads me to believe a) I don't have the proper configuration to continue installing this, and b) I probably misunderstood the purpose of the tool in the first place. Oh well. I got my first inkling that this was possible from Scoble, so maybe there's hope.

I will list the sharepoint blogs I've found so far right here. But first, I have to mention: if you're an American and think like I do that all the Europeans do is wander around on some kind of extended leave from their jobs all the time, you owe yourself this read. Boy do folks have it rough in Finland. (tone deliberately ambiguous).

Also one other cute thing: what the heck is InfoPath? Could it possibly be true that an entire Office product exists just to make the sharepoint pill easier to swallow, or do I have a distorted view? For years I thought Access was a program that sat on top of Office to handle accessibility issues. This is the same: Oh, they've added InfoPath to office. Maybe it's a metadata tool? Maybe it's a successor to favorites? Who knows. I'll check it out and get back. Meanwhille, follow this link to see why "InfoPath's claim to fame is that it lets teams using SharePoint Portal Server 2003 easily create custom forms. Microsoft designed InfoPath to help address the fact that the creation of custom Web parts for SharePoint Portal Server 2003 is difficult." Wow.

Okay, potentially useful sharepoint blogs:
Westin's Technical Log
Sig Webers Playground
SharePoint Blogs
Mike Walsh's WSS, Finland and more
IPattern.com (Maxim V. Karpov)
FrontPoint
feedreader

Posted by Elizabeth Grigg at 02:01 PM | Permalink

I'm thinking about how documents are king. On your computer, you have not created an initiative or a contact, you're created or edited a document. Documents can be copied this way or that. What they don't have is a strong relationship to data. The data is lying within those documents, waiting to be abstracted into other forms du jour.

My realization is that if the documents did not exist, only the data, then you could generate documents like you generate reports from the data. Some text annotation, some pictures of couch potatoes blissfully using remote controls via clip art, and you're back to where you started. But with some essential differences:

1) Searching - in a relevant and contextual way, such as keyword = project name as opposed to keyword = mentioned at all
2) Revision control - so no need to store 18 versions as you polish your ppt to a shiny sheen. There is only ever one query on your data, only ever one ppt.
3) Focus - you can view the world as many slices of the data. Perhaps you're looking for a competitive matrix. Perhaps you're building contact info. These are all slices. Run the report. No need for ordinary busy people to maintain docs all the time
4) Blatant intended audience - similar to selecting "Mood" in your music metadata, you could select "Executive" when looking for only business cases, reorgs, budgets, metrics.

Now your brain hurts too! I feel better

Posted by Elizabeth Grigg at 12:36 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Call me crazy, but the dishwasher encapsulates many issues that program managers face in the software world. It's a good check to see if the job is a fit for you. For example:

* Do you have a "way" that you load the dishwasher?
* How do you manage it when your less process-oriented spouse loads it a different way?
Hint: rearranging dishes yourself so everything fits = bad, making him handwash the stuff that doesn't fit = good
* Say you're emptying the dishwasher and you're on silverware. You have a silverware sorter where there's a place for spoons, a fork-shaped place for forks, that sort of thing. You obediently put everything in its right place, but it occurs to you that this is taking forever with no real benefit. What do you do?
a) Cringe in horror at the very thought of throwing silverware in the drawer unsorted
b) Give the whole basket a big toss, and look around to see if you shocked anyone
c) Continue to sort the darn things, because that's how it has always been done.

Posted by Elizabeth Grigg at 12:53 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

It's not so hard. Here's the rule?

Call me Beth.

Exception 1) On paper. Then it's Elizabeth Grigg.
Exception 2) You're using my last name. Then it's Elizabeth Grigg

Basically I never wanted to hear "Beth Grigg" and changed to Elizabeth when I got married so this would never be the case.

For some reason people have a hard time with this

Posted by Elizabeth Grigg at 08:04 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

I've been reading about time management techniques via a book by Julie Morgenstern. I love reading books by people who spend so much time in New York that they don't even realize the NY-isms when they use them. (What's a walk-up?) One of her instructions is to do an honest assesment of how long it takes you to do anything. For example, on principle I should be able to be up and out of the house in half an hour provided all I have to do is get dressed and put my things in a bag. Extended grooming add another half hour. Make lunches for everyone and breakfast for myself, another half hour. Bus should take a half hour. Essentially I think everything should take half an hour. Paying attention this morning, it seems I can get up at 6am and easily not make it into work until 10am, provided I have a normal morning in which I don't have to eat a power bar at my desk. That's just phenomenally unacceptable. I think I have to go into mourning for my morning. And every day is like this.

Fixes could include laying clothes out the night before (but what if the weather changes, and who has energy or surface area for such things, plus does it really take that much time), or packing lunches the night before (but soggy lettuce), or shower the night before (um, is that a cat on your head), or eat breakfast the night before. This is one of those things that just takes time whether at night or in the morning. Perhaps a qualified psychiatrist who doubles as a maid - now that would help.

Posted by Elizabeth Grigg at 07:45 AM | Permalink

I didn't get to see Alice Walker last night. I got as far as saving myself a seat, with my not quite potty trained 3 year old in tow. The plan was to dump him off with his Dad who would drive up at the last minute, so I could stay for the lecture. Then, wouldn't you know, but we had to head off back to the car for a change. (Had to). It was cold, so I chose to use my bag of miscellany to save my seat rather than my coat. Then three blocks in non-sensible shoes and realized we were locked out of the car, my keys were in the bag, the lecture had started, and a horrendous accident on the bridge was delaying Dad's arrival to bail me out. We could walk back, pants ruined, shoes painful, and barge into a lecture in progress to get our keys if they would let us. Or, we could sit down on the grass and wait. The options were so bad I had to sit down just to think about it. Then the child started bolting.

Bolting is when he looks back at you, giggles, and then runs at top speed toward something very far away like three city blocks through traffic. I sat up way too fast, injured myself, and threw my non-sensible shoes violently down on the sidewalk. Then I chased after him in my socks. I'd like to say I wasn't shouting, but I can't. For those of you without kids, this is how you become one of those parents, the ones that non-parents look at and think either "I'll never have kids" or "I would never be like that, not in a million years, no matter how many kids I had." I know this because that's what I used to think.

Anyway a helpful resident bailed us out, got my keys for me, and then we went for waffles. So much for Alice, it just wasn't in the cards.

Speaking of in the cards, I've been drooling over the technical careers weblog again, I have so much to offer the questions they are asking, but it gets so personal and private, and frankly it's a sore subject. Twice I have opened an email to the authors and then closed it without sending. The fact is, I don't want them to take any action on my behalf, I want to win on my merits. I also am not sure I want to change the system. It's like lowering the basketball hoop or something. I think I have to just admit that while I have experiences that can be distilled into bullet points and action items, that a hire for me wasn't in the cards so far. If I took action now, it would imply a level of responsibility toward previous results, and I prefer to think of results as mysterious and alchemic. Plus I'm relived to be able to table the topic for a few months. Perhaps I'll comment long after the thread has died.

Posted by Elizabeth Grigg at 10:53 AM | Permalink

Today will be a strange one. I'm moving buildings and assignments. I'm coming in to pack up my stuff in a box, handing over my keycard and computer. Monday I start the wait for a new keycard. After I've cleaned out my desk, I think I'll spend the rest of the day trying to get in to see Alice Walker.

Posted by Elizabeth Grigg at 08:56 AM | Permalink

This is a very cute article about the cyclical job market, particularly for the term "warm chair attrition." This is the term for folks who come in every day, filling seats, but are not performing their job in any measurable way. I am completely convinced that this exists absolutely everywhere. (is that enough emphatics?) Even to a small extent, people can have "off" weeks. Of course, if I have an off week, I don't submit my time, so there is at least not the double guilt of not performing and getting paid for it anyway.

Posted by Elizabeth Grigg at 07:22 AM | Permalink

This terrific post by Rands in Repose justifies why it's OK to adopt new criteria for fixing bugs the closer you get to ship. In actuality, the scale goes from a straight ramp (low, med, hi) to completely polarized (whatever, whatever, heinous). It's not that you're lowering your standards, it's that you're recategorizing away from the straight line of mid-project bug triage.

Posted by Elizabeth Grigg at 11:51 AM | Permalink

In a follow-up to my earlier post about the cyclical attention the world pays to your own issues as an individual, it's striking me via the latest dialogue in scoble's weblog that having a blog really exposes how evolved you are.

The echo chamber can be defined as a system which encourages links back to itself and discourages external links. The mechanism for encouragement or discouragement could be technical (such as requiring logon) or social (such as nepotism). The directory at Microsoft is a classic example of a technically limiting factor. If you're name doesn't "resolve" it's hard to get things done. Hard to set up meetings, hard to join groups. You might as well use an external e-mail address during this stage. What this means is that during the time when new people most need to hit the ground running, they're faced with this obstacle. Often a new person is hired to get a team out of self referenial state. Then they have to wait for this new person to become part of "self" (in this example, the outlook directory). That makes for an echo chamber environment: you only hear from people you already hear from.

By soliciting such wide outside commentary, blogs are inherently NOT echo chambers, and this is what brings out the best and the worst in people, and keeps things interesting.

Posted by Elizabeth Grigg at 10:55 AM | Permalink

Continuing the girls in tech theme (but why, you might ask... it's so boring to talk about gender when there's so many cool things you can do with code? and I agree):

When I was in 7th grade we had some lousy IBM computers in a classroom taught by Mr. Livingston. Yes, my dad made the joke when he met him at parent night (... I presume?) I was just starting to get embarassed by stuff like that. Anyway, we wrote programs in basic, and saved them to cassette. I just got my paper route too, and was listening to my new walkman while delivering papers. Once I put in one of my program cassettes just to see what it sounded like - I'm sure everyone did this.

One thing that kept me off the machines was the fact that you could only do so much in class, and then you had to stay after school in order to get some real programming time in. I tried to do this once, and signed up ahead of a boy. This was one of the boys that was given a seat in the coveted pre-calculus table the year before. So I already had a grudge against him, as I was denied a seat there not due to skills but because I didn't physically make it to the seat in time on the first day of school. What is this, math skills via footrace? Duck duck goose? I threw a tantrum, which was the only time I got kicked out of class, and was never given pre-calc until high school out of a series of coincidences.

Anyway, this kid who I had a grudge against was there in the computer lab every day after school. I was only there that one day, and took "his" computer. He yelled very loudly and told the teacher that it was his computer, and that I couldn't even type (which was true). I know his agony of suddenly having nothing to do after class other than watch the fat girl type with one finger on his precious computer. I stood my gound that day, with teacher's help, but I wasn't really incentivized to come back. Walking home was a major social event, and I would get completely disbanned from the girl clique if I stopped going home with them and stayed in the computer lab instead. No more MTV, no more ouiji board. I just couldn't bear it. So I never went back.

I did make the most of my class time by creating a very cool matchmaker program. I listed all the girls names and boys names in the class, and asked the user to give their name. I think I chose a date for them based on haircolor or something dumb. It caused a serious disturbance in the classroom once people started trying it out. Tee hee.

Conlcude what you like about these anecdotes. I conclude that a) girls won't be interested in anything without a social component and b) girls are pointedly unable to overcome something socially negative, for fear of being branded for life, and c) buy enough computers in the first place, silly!

Posted by Elizabeth Grigg at 11:46 AM | Permalink | Comments (6)

Like most bloggers, I occasionally troll the logs for some referring URL of interest. There hasn't been tons, mostly because if you're reading this you're reading through a newsreader and therefore anonymous. Due to my old blog's longevity on radio's servers, as well as a crusty old link from Scoble pointing to it, the radio blog seems to enjoy more fame than this one, despite far less relevance and being far less interesting in the first place. Other ways of expanding my network have seemed too formalized, Technorati, LinkedIn, it's all I can do to write, actually. And I'm grateful for that.

One of the most popular themes I had going in the last blog I had, was how to interview at Microsoft. I'm assuming it's popular because it was a common search string from which my old blog drew a hit. Finding this out put me in a slightly charlatan position, because although I know lots on the subject, I can't say to be very successful at it. For example, one time I flunked out because I forgot about the mod operator. This was after claiming that I was very technical. You should have seen the look on my face. "Plus, minus, add, subtract, and... ummm... " Then I went through the booleans. Oh well, better luck next time.

I'm posting this because I'm fighting the urge to do a massive brain dump on all my interviews right here in this blog. Fighting valiantly and winning so far. First of all, I think I might have signed something saying I shouldn't talk about it. Second, it's not what I'm all about. If I miss with an interview I usually have a nice overpriced steak with friends, ending in some sort of "never again" and "screw them" type of exclamation over drinks, and then I get back going the next day wanting more. (Not more interviews, by the way, but more of Microsoft. Is that strange?) And a last reason not to post a brain dump is it would guaranteed boost my readership and I just don't want to be about that. I want to boost readership from people who enter search strings such as "sack lunch +microsoft." Okay, nobody has ever done this, but with my help maybe they might.

Speaking of sack lunches, I finally came off my cooking boycott and bought groceries at trader joes. Lunch was a pepper turkey and bacon sandwich, with lettuce and tomato on white. I cooked the bacon this morning so it was fresh and crisp. Side dishes were creamline maple yogurt, grapes, and a little bag of carrots. It was like the first day of school.

The reason why I'm weeping in my beer this week is that I thought I had a great lead on a UI program manager job at MS. The hiring manager wanted me to move forward with the recruiter. Then I got a note from the recruiter saying that I was not qualified, and that it was inappropriate for me to have contacted the hiring manager in the first place. This is because I'm a contractor. Completely new information to me. But what do I do with it?

Now, I love Microsoft and I respect rules, and I also respect how hiring managers must feel when they post a job and people like me stand outside their door drawing pictures and code on their tablet and pressing it up against the glass, like little kids asking for money from tourists in a third world country. I also appreciate how these rules protect them, and protect me from getting sued. I also appreciate how there is a historical cultural rift between contractors and FTEs at Microsoft and there is a whole system in place to smooth that over, including this no contact rule I just found out about. However, my current contractor position is ending and the only reason I have a new one is that I contacted a hiring manager directly for a FTE position and we just made up a contract job on the spot. I can't tell you how happy this new position makes me. It's like being on standby and then getting a seat on the plane. Assuming you really want to get wherer you're going, that is. I'm really realllly happy about it. So, what's a good girl to do, follow the rules, or break them?

I'm still heavily conflicted by this new information, as well as the tone in which it was delivered, and I'm glad to put the old (and I mean ooooold) search for a FTE job at Microsoft on the back burner for a while. I'll let existing leads take their course, but no more job agents and job carts at the career site for a while.

I can't say enough good things about the technical careers blog, and hope that I never have to hear bad news from either of the lovely contributors.

Posted by Elizabeth Grigg at 07:01 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

A friend was talking to me about drama at work. Although it wasn't MS, the drama seemed similar to many I've encountered. People stand up for other people, alienate others, and can in general act like high schoolers with short attention spans. I'm no exception, it's just that I get caught less.

Here's the thing: this getting caught is everything. Nobody is 100% completely evolved as a human being. Even Ghandi has his ups and downs. (Well, mostly downs lately, but no matter). If the person is unlucky, the point at which they are coping with a specific issue happens to be the exact point at which the world puts them under scrutiny for it. This means public and often catastrophic failure for this person. Someone else will have their own bouquet of issues, but they fly under the world's radar. For some reason, the universe just happens to pick out this lucky person's strengths. All they get for their trouble is kudos and a raise. Not bad. How do they do it?

You could argue that the unlucky person is really at fault, that they should learn when to pick their battles or conduct themselves differently, that getting caught so many times really does point to a personal failing and not just bad luck. I disagree: extraordinarily aware and sensitive people will pay more attention to things the world is paying attention to (like communication style for example), and thus align the sine wave pattern of their faults even more closely to match the scrutiny of the external environment. They do this on purpose because they want to change. It's called not living in a vacum.

So this is something I try to remember when I see someone crash and burn. It could easily be me. A fault exposed does not make it bigger. What I would hope for in that position is simply some slack, there's no other term for it.

Posted by Elizabeth Grigg at 04:24 PM | Permalink

What a priviege to see David Bowie last night (4/14/04). I'd never seen him before, so I was unprepared for his smallness and ordinaryness in person. Very friendly and mellow guy. Occasionally the light treats him otherwise, he can sometimes cut that angular profile that send the fashionistas swooning. Some observations:
* What a professional. It was like watching someone walk into their office and check their email. Except the office is a stadium and the music is in charge.
* Visible separation between the bowie-songwriter person and the bowie-performer. We saw the performer last night no question, not trumeting or acknowledging or remaking items from 30 years ago, nor reconciling the present work with that trajectory. He gives himself permission to be someone else for a while.
* Interesting to see someone who spent all their time becoming more expressive. They won't act like ordinary folks, they'll bring things in from their unconscious without thinking twice. For example, a pantomime of bloody arms transitioning into a ball on the floor. Or, doing the hands behind your own back make out with yourself thing. I thought: this is what we should be like as writers. If it's there, expose it. If it's not there, make it up and then expose it. Easier to do with words than in front of a crowd certainly.

Very much worth a laugh was the opening band Polyphonic Spree, whose 45 band members wore choir robes and jumped up and down delivering bombastic enthusiasm. Much too loud and vapid, and british down to their font (although perhaps not in citizenship). Funny how one guy (db) can steal the show following all that. A friend called my cell during an especially loud part. I answered the call, let it pick up what must have been huge noise for 30 seconds or so, then hung up to spare him the rest.

This morning I'm heading in to find out what bombs are waiting for me in my inbox. I don't check mail on off days remotely, so that anxiety is there. It's less than the anxiety caused by checking, though.

Posted by Elizabeth Grigg at 06:58 AM | Permalink

If you're new to installers but not new to XML, this is a great link to find.

I suppose I should have heard of these guys before, but nevermind, anything useful I will be very happy taking advantage of.

Posted by Elizabeth Grigg at 07:55 AM | Permalink

But I found this great time waster about Clippy! Okay, no one will click on a link labeled great time waster. How about here's a technical guy with a life who can actually write imaginatively. The magic formula, the 2 ingredients, the result is funny writing. And long. So grab your teriyukki bowl and settle in.

Posted by Elizabeth Grigg at 03:19 PM | Permalink

Lots of movement happening at the office, I hope to go into more specifics later. I love arriving early and shocking the east coast people by replying to their mails and calls right away. In order to make that happen, though, I had to leave the house without making lunches. I have something horrid here in the MS freezer (something ending in "bowl") that I will probably eat after my starbucks bacon sandwich finally digests. However, I did have the presence of mind this morning to throw a roast chicken in the oven before leaving. Yes, early morning chicken roasting. It had been marinating in a bag all weekend, french onion soup mix, misc italian sausage de-glazings. I just dumped it on the rack and left the late risers to throw it in the fridge once the timer went off. Love that 2 day marinade. My hopes are high.

I'm constantly surprised at how little people talk about food. It's everywhere, and in a loaded weekend like this one it becomes a social anchor: what are you doing for lunch? for dinner? Particularly the MVP conference last week, I have seen no mention of what must have been a monotonous Eurest-fest to end it all. Even my parents who no longer have taste buds get bored with one meal of Eurest. It's another example of a controlled environment, and unconscious eating. In case you haven't noticed, I'm into consciousness of all kinds.

Still on a high from having completed a very cool feature last week.

I was pleased to see David Allen talk about food in his weblog. I have no geiger counter for other aspects of his work, but I love to see people become aware of how central eating can become to entertainment. Although, David, you need to cool it on the chilean sea bass, that mercury will make you extra stupid, no joke. Just look at this post for example.

Since I'm obviously linking today and not thinking, I need to link to whatisnew.com with some observances on women at the MVP summit. Anyone interested in thinking more deeply about the topic should read Brenda Laurel's pamphlet called Utopian Entrepreneur. Brenda ran Purple Moon, a video game production house with a focus on girls. She is an excellent writer, and this little wonder is worth at least your library queue, if not a purchase. Run a search on her name too, what you get is tons of human computer interaction and industrial design insights.

Posted by Elizabeth Grigg at 08:38 AM | Permalink

I had fun today sending out the results of my fancy-pants feature that I created yesterday. I also got to walk around builkding 50 where I know a couple folks. I definitely will be gone for the weekend, but looking forward to Monday just the same. Call me crazy, I just keep coming back for more.

Today I got my hair done. I go to the beauty school because, as you know, I'm cheap. I also go to the beauty school because there is a high level of knowledge there (instructors) that scales to infom the particular student I'm working with. The student always takes a while to understand what I want, because there is a second tier of people there to review their choices. Because of this review step, the beauty school has fewer screwups than the full price places.

This methodology can apply to many things: a test team, pair programming, ui design, almost anything that requires precision.

Posted by Elizabeth Grigg at 03:53 PM | Permalink

It's been a terrible day. I'm trying to look for a silver lining. Oh, that's right, coding. I got an entire feature working and it's really cool and will save me personally lots of time. The other stuff I can barely bring myself to contemplate, yet alone process and get over it. Don't worry, nobody died. I suppose that's another boon.

Guess what, someone more reputable just decided that MS had a culture of thrift, just when I was going off about a culture of opulence.

Posted by Elizabeth Grigg at 06:54 PM | Permalink

Did anyone else see the TabletPC in use on 24 last night? Michelle had her guilty party handcuffed to a pipe, and she whipped out her tablet which was in keyboard mode. She set it down on something, opened it up, and did the "rotate" to put it into draw mode. I thought she was going to have her suspect do a character sketch of his boss! But no, they ended up beaming photos of potential bosses in a slide show, and she herself tapped the screen to switch to a new one. She didn't even give the guy a chance to draw. I mean, just because he murdered a whole hotel as well as infected himself, doesn't mean he doesn't have artistic skills? Oh well. I wonder how that was done for the show, whether it was a corny product plug or if the producers really wanted that type of interaction with technology. And I also wonder which on the team of 24 writers owns a tablet. Michelle might as well - she had the rotate down pretty good. I hope her character survives the virus.

Posted by Elizabeth Grigg at 04:15 PM | Permalink

In the spirit of "weblog as spare brain," here are some ideas for packaging up materials (or skills) I already have.

Technology related:
* Project management certificate
* C# certification
* Spec portfolio, including
- CalendarPeople
- KC
- GhostStory
- AW & NG
- post mortem spec on bethsxmlmerge
- psychic longhorn specs from 2007
* Certificated graphics design course (SVC?)

Not technology related:
* Baseball Train (this is a children's book I've finished but not "finished.")
* Business cards and letterhead
* Toastmasters
* That novel I wrote that's still in draft form

Archive Related:
* Contacts management
* Personal projects accountability system (nope, a to-do list in my weblog won't cut it ;)
* Photographs / filing
* Digitize all tape recordings of my own work

See how nothing less than a retreat would be needed to get this to happen?

Posted by Elizabeth Grigg at 04:05 PM | Permalink

On the wonderful jobsblog, there are testimonials on what it's really like to work at MS. I've noticed that if your life falls into standard parameters, this can be truthful, as to a large extent you can allow what is happening in and around MS to shape your activities and your schedule. Other people have more nonstandard stuff going on, and tend to be a little less malleable by the corporate culture. I fall into the latter category.

For example, as part of my family's great time and money saving experiment, we have heralded back in the return of sucky tuesdays. These are tuesdays where both of us only work a half day. I wake up at 5 and pack a sack breakfast and lunch. I call a cab at 5:30 to get me to the bus stop by 5:55 which is the earliest possible bus. I get off at the main MS bus station, and walk 15 minutes in the dawn light to my building. I'm always very excited to be there. I look around and remember building 19, and how nervous I was at the interviews I've had, and know I will be there again. I remember driving past all these buildings before my first interview when I was 21, and they were all just being built. It was a Sunday night, so all the cranes stood idle against the black sky which was about to storm. Nothing so ominous yesteray. Sometimes I see a bunny.

At work I archived my code and started deleting. I took out all the infrastructure to do stuff that I no longer thought was important. After 2 hours, it worked again, and was faster too. Same feature set. This is why I code: even revision days are exhilerating.

At about 11am my legs began to atrophy, so I walked around the woods in the water conservation trail. I heroically passed up coffee at the cafeteria. Back at my desk, switch chairs, switch pillow, maybe I can make it to 1. Find out I need to spend 4 hours downloading something via ftp. Ick. I will be gone by then. Turn all hibernation settings off, turn off screen savers, start up ftp.exe and wish they had a progress bar. Send email for the rest of the day until it's time to leave. Eat cambell's tomato soup made with milk, and whole milk yogurt with added cinnamon and sugar.

After watching 24 at my cousin's house, it's time to get the family snuggled in bed and then it's back to MS to retrieve my file. Miracle: it's done. Miracle: it's not corrupted. I spend 1 hour sending mails about these miracles and then drive home. No, I didn't save any time today via commuting that's for sure. But I got to appreciate MS during those hours that only the truly thrilled to come to work can appreciate.

Best funny story of yesterday: one of my good friends is now "Rally Guy." This is due to his performance at the Mariners yesterday. Somebody send me a link!

Posted by Elizabeth Grigg at 08:55 AM | Permalink

This is a sequel to my previous post about the challenges of getting together a spec portfolio. I'd like to broaden the point. Packaging is a big part of what we do when we communicate. Although I'm naturally organized, I'm not a natural packager or finesse person. That means I do stuff, if it serves its purpose, I don't make a scrapbook out of it. Often I delete the file. I'm happy to have the purpose served. There's also a little post-feminist (and post-high school, frankly) impulse to say packaging is unimportant, it has no effect, it can lie and hide things and our time is better spent on substance.

This attitude of mine trips me up, and has done recently to such an extent that I'm compelled to do a packaging retreat. This is akin to the point in the product development cycle where you scream "no new features" but plow in and reposition everything. A packaging retreat would be "no new projects." That's right, no programming, no starting new books, just a realignment and repositioning of what I already have, for public consumption.

Funny the things we dismiss because we think we're "growing up" and instead we loop right back to those things once we have really done so.

Posted by Elizabeth Grigg at 12:26 PM | Permalink

A sticker on the vending machine sounds a lot like the cover letters I write.

"I am your Eurest Dining Services Vending Attendant. I am proud to provide Microsoft Corporation with excellent customer service as your Eurest Dining Services Vending Attendant."

Then there's the guy's picture, who was obviously under duress to make the above statement.

Yesterday was big food day over here at MS. A meeting of big honchos were trapped in a conference room all day, with their lunch bubbling outside in the lobby. It was labelled "Vegetarian." It certainly smelled complicated. A small bowl of condiments for the meal - whatever it was - lay alongside. The condiments appeared to be a blueberry and onion salsa. (Eeewww). Eventually folks emerged and did a little damage to the lunch cart. The salsa looked like it had been stirred around a bit, but not eaten. Then folks were gone for awhile - conference room empty - then they were back. Is it possible that they decided to all go out to eat, after facing such a horrific meal? Once the honchos were back in the conference room, the lunch cart bubbled away at least until I left for home.

Over in the cafeteria there is a big meeting room, say maybe 400 person capacity. Around 2:00 there was a buffet outside this room (as if being steps from the cafeteria weren't enough). The line of dishes stretched across the whole wall, perhaps 6 banquet tables in length. No people. Open doors to the conference room, nobody there.

I bring this up as evidence that you really can survive at MS by eating stuff that's lying around. Also that there's a culture of opulence. At some point I'd like to take up a dare to live for a week, not spending any money, and only off of found food at MS. It would make a the reverse-opulence point, I suppose. Maybe the project could be one of those awful articles in the New Yorker that you wonder why you're reading?

Posted by Elizabeth Grigg at 08:17 AM | Permalink

You're at a stopping point in your code, casually defined as being able to verbally list the features without having to add more disclaimers than your audience has attention span for. Now it's time for the misc fixes, the finesse postponements, the other branches of functionality you always intended. But there's more: now that you see your product working in concert with your overall system (this can be technology or workflow), you know you need to prioritize to make that as efficient as possible. Your product has this additional kind of customer, which is the next thing in the assembly line to receive the results. In short, your old cut line in your feature list may no longer apply.

With losing the hour, combined with natural weekend drift in schedules (no way I get up at 5am on Sunday just to keep me used to it on Monday, for example), I'm looking at a real whammy of a thought problem. I've taken a step back and reasessed, and I have a new feature list broken out into tasks, with the critical path item labelled and dated. Now it's time to start: but dare I start on so little sleep?

It's perfectly working code, sortof. Now it's time to delete and replace with initially non-working but eventually more functional code, that exists in a different structure than the old. High frontal lobe stuff. It just seems unwise somehow...

Posted by Elizabeth Grigg at 01:31 PM | Permalink

Wonder how I missed this post by Eric Gunnerson when it first came out. Perhaps, to be consistent, MS should have everyone put their actual schedule (not the outlook one) into XML as the survey response. The numbers should speak for themselves.

Posted by Elizabeth Grigg at 08:21 AM | Permalink

I managed to fix the bug I have been thrashing on now for a week. Kindof a let-down, really, I was expecting it to have more of a pervasive effect on the data. As is, it only corrected one field. However, I now have trust in the others.

I had SUCH posting regret yesterday, not really sure why, on the one hand I'm not exactly maintaining a list of complacent folks at MS, or naming names... on the other hand why would I even notice other people's attitudes, summing them up like that? Truth is I observe people in order to emulate their success, and sometimes I don't always observe successful behavior. Go figure. Lots of folks are still successful anyway.

One blog idea I could write that exemplifies how low I am on any sort of pedestal is the list of things I have personally screwed up on in a MS interview. It's a long list. I suppose if I get a nasty comment about being so snotty from yesterday I might just be compelled to tell all.

Today: cinnamon toast, daylight savings time, spying on the neigbors (what's with all the furniture upside down on the lawn?), IRS forms, digging through our own garbage can out of desperation looking for something, also: an enormous backlog of personal papers needing to be filed from the master "to be filed" bin, and a 75% chance of disney.

Posted by Elizabeth Grigg at 07:41 AM | Permalink

I'd like to propose a couple of general rules about interviewing at Microsoft, of which there are many exceptions I'm sure.

Rule #1: The Inevitable Hire
For some people, getting a job offer at Microsoft is like falling out of bed. They may have been a little worried about the interview, but they pull through and accept an offer like it has been waiting for them all along. Reasons for this are more than just technical, design, or people skills. Lots of time the personality of the inevitable hire comes across as someone who has an immediate match with the interviewer's perspective. It would be obvious to the interviewer how that person would add to that mission. For the interviewer, a "hire" on this candidate would mean that their specific goals would more likely be met this year. It would not mean a change or reassesment of those goals.

Rule #2: The Tooth and Nail Hire
Other people seem like an odd match for Microsoft from the get go. They have enough on their resume to get them in the door, as well as passion for the industry, but a contrarian nature and their own idea of how to get things done. They don't always bring up process or technical examples of how to solve a problem in an interview, sometimes it is a matter of analyzing the past and coming at it from a whole new way. They won't just take the team mission like a horse pill, they'll question it the whole time, although some of these candidates can be tactful and know when to initiate changes. For an interviewer to mark this candidate as a hire, they would need to be in the position where they want to groom strong leadership, even if this means abandoning some short term goals.

Controversy: What's best for Microsoft?
I have no numbers to back up either of these trends. All I know is that the inevitable hires, as a rule, do not know what to do with themselves once a problem comes up that the team is new to solving. They have no way of aligning their idea of safety and complacency with the opposing concept that they'd better come out with a new plan and soon in order to react to this (in my opinion fascinating) industry. On the other hand, when you need a tough choice, or strong analysis, the tooth and nail hire is a much better ally. After all, they worked like the dickens to get there. They worked like the dickens to prove they had the technical, design, and people skills to make it. They didn't just get this easy, they wanted it forever. Complacency is unknown to them. And the sad fact is, these folks have a hard time getting hired.

Potential Solutions:
Without validating my claims, of course, it's hard to take this seriously enough to come up with a plan. However, it would be a big help if HR did the following:
1) Posted the "level" of the job description with the job, so those with less measurable skills can decide for themselves whether it's worth applying.
2) Post the "career paths at Microsoft" information, so that an applicant who is really motivated can incorporate this into their medium term plans. For example, if all Program Managers need to be C# MVPs, that's great to know. (probably not true by the way)
3) Encourage interviewers to set the team's immediate goals aside when assessing a candidate. Encourage them to set their own goals aside. What person has the leadership to help the team over the next transition/reorg/market change?
4) If a candidate is marked as a "no hire" overall, and there were some promising "hires" in the mix, stay with the candidate. Don't just say you will, don't say "it's the candidate's responsibility to be the squeaky wheel." A candidate who has been turned down (the good ones, the polite ones) are not likely to mail the poor recruiter every week. They have, however, proven they can interview successfully, have the passion to work there, and the skills to get in the door. Isn't this worth following up?

I'm very grateful to Zoe and Gretchen for starting their jobsblog, and hope this is a portent of things to come.

Posted by Elizabeth Grigg at 07:30 AM | Permalink | Comments (2)

Lots of C# yesterday. I walked in swearing I had the fix for a bug, opened up the compiler, and my hands froze. What was I typing? How was this going to work? Back up, retrench. I spent a long time analyzing the data. I made an excel spreadsheet of all the fields, but at 3columns and 18rows it was too much to keep track of. Then I used power point to show exactly which field was affecting what. Not only was it pretty, but it showed that 9 out of 18 rows were data dead-ends: they were only products of a calculation rather than a source. So, armed with my new knowledge, I cracked open the code.

The irony is with all that work, I still see nothing wrong with my original algorithm, which was actually commented pretty well. I made one change and am getting different results, but overall this bug with the results is still not fixed. I'll keep going on it today.

Posted by Elizabeth Grigg at 08:13 AM | Permalink