Currently I'm interning at Google - Mountain View, CA - and by the end of this internship I'll write a similar post about my experience at Google.
Later on, in other post, I'll discuss about how I knew and got these job opportunities and also about ways for you to possibly achieve that too.
What Happened:
From January to April I enrolled in an internship at Microsoft, Redmond-WA, in the main campus of the company.
Position at Microsoft:
At MS I worked as a Software Design Engineer in Test of a product called System Center Operations Manager, in the Windows & Enterprise Management Division.
I must be sincere and tell you guys that, prior to receiving the internship offer, I knew as much as you are supposed to now about this product: N-O-T-H-I-N-G!
Knowing a little bit more about System Center Operations Manager:
Starting from the beginning, Microsoft has a family of products called System Center that helps IT professionals to manage the physical and virtual IT environments across data centers, desktops and devices. By now, this line of products includes eight softwares: Operations Manager, Virtual Machine Manager, Mobile Device Manager, Data Protection Manager, Configuration Manager, Service Manager, Essentials and Capacity Planner.
Regarding Operations Manager, also known as MOM (Microsoft Operations Manager) - its formerly name, in simple words, it monitors events and performance of servers, allowing system's administrators to realize problems before they result in crash of the system or even solving some typical or expected problems automatically, without human intervention, reporting what have been done to the administrator.
It was really surprising for me the way I felt interested by this product while I was learning about that. It was much more than I was expecting. It's a really great product, with a great architecture, scalable by now up to thousands servers, what is really impressive. I won't say it's the best product on its category, since I don't know its competitors (IBM Tivoli, to mention one), but I wouldn't be surprised if that was true.
For me it was a really really nice experience to be in touch with a software totally different from those I was used to, focused on companies and system administrator's rather than end users.
Basic Benefits at Microsoft:
- Salary
- Paid round trip air ticket to MS
- Shipping reimbursement
- Great discounts on renting apartment (Subsidized house rental on some corporate housings)
- Rental car for a really affordable price (Subsidized car rental)
- Free membership on a fancy gym
- Discount on MS products
- Free drinking at work (there are refrigerators over all buildings, full of sodas, milk, tea, water, etc...)
- Special Parties and Events
- PRIME Card discounts (great discounts in lots of establishments over the US)
- Free Bus Pass
- MS Shuttle
Going to MS was a really easy task (totally user-friendly - hehe)! My main concern was to timely schedule and pay for my H-3 Visa (Trainee US Visa) in Brazil.
Six basic steps:
1) Go to the airport.
2) Enter the airplane using my already bought ticket.
3) Land in Seattle.
4) Still on the airport, go to the rental car company, on the airport's garage, and get my already rented car (for the whole three months)
5) Drive until Redmond (25 min trip), to my already rented house
6) Enjoy the house's comfort
Everything was really perfect and arranged by Microsoft! Nothing at all to complain!
I was nervous as a result of being my first time in US, but having this huge support everything seemed really easy and normal.
They gave me the air ticket, rented me an apartment and rented me a car, everything prior to my arrival. Everything was in place for me when I came. Until today I'm completely amazed about that.
Environment at Microsoft:
As you can imagine, the work environment there is pretty good.
They assigned an spacious office to me, which I shared with one more person. My work computer was pretty nice - brand new and fast! I got a big and nice LCD monitor, a good chair and a fancy touchscreen desk telephone.
There are mini-kitchens through all buildings, with refrigerators always full of free drinks (any type of them). The edifices usually have a cafeteria, with some good restaurants selling nice and "cheap" food (comparing with restaurants outside the campus).
You can also find some stuff to have fun inside all buildings, like snookers, tennis table or foosball (In specific edifices there are available some Xbox's games, as "guitar hero" and many others).
Regarding diversity, I could definitely figure out what they mean with "Microsoft is an equal opportunity employer". I met all kind of people there! People with purple hair, full of tattoos, the nerd stereotype, the old, the young, the asian, the jewish, the muslim, the catholic, the european, the indian, the black, the blond, the arabian, the handicapped, whatever...people from all around the world, with different habits, religions, accents, cultures.
People I directly dealt with (at work) were from: US, Brazil, India, Egypt, Bielo-Russia, Estonia, Bulgaria, Nigeria, Canada.
PS: I actually was impressed about the number of Brazilians I met there. Much more than I was expecting.
Age range:
I may be wrong on affirming this but, it seemed to me that people at MS are older than I expected. At least on my group, I would say that the average age would be between 30-40 years old.
Prior to the internship I was expecting to meet a lot of guys just graduated from college, about 20-25 years old, but instead of it most of my colleagues were married and older than me.
Because of that (and the inherent consequences of it), I felt a little bit shy at the beginning. But as people were very kind and supportive, I quickly felt myself welcomed and o.k.
Social Events:
During the internship I had lots of social events to participate, some only for interns, others only for my Team, and some for all MS employees.
It included a basketball game, a snow tubing, a cruise, a tour on a chocolate factory, a tour at the "MS Home of the Future", a tour at Boeing's factory, special dinners, parties related to the launch of softwares (specially VS 2008, SQL Server 2008 and Operations Manager SP1), some special private exhibitions from MS Research and other groups - as Office Labs - showing their innovative projects, and more. Summarizing: The social events were awesome.
It's important to remind that I was interning in the Winter, when there are few interns in the company. Traditionally, on the Summer internship there are much more interns (on the winter we were about 50 interns and in the summer were expected 800) and consequently there are much more intern's events, including a barbecue at the backyard of Bill Gates' house.
Work At Microsoft:
Talking about job and roles, my internship was really amazing.
Intentionally, my manager gave me a challenging project and gave me a lot of liberty to decide how to solve the problem. Basically, I needed to write an API to automate some specific tests on the product. This API was something that people on the team really wanted to have among the test tools, and so it was really nice to do something I could see people interested on and that could effectively help the group.
Though it was an individual project, I had to deal with a lot of people from the team to figure out their needs - and to ask for help (most usual, hehe)!
I programmed using C#, .NET Framework, WCF (Windows Communication Foundation) and some internal APIs for Operations Manager.
I also spent some time learning about tests on multi-threaded code, but didn't applied it.
In my internship, I think previous knowledge and experience was essential to get the job done, as well as - and specially - fast learn ability - to deal with a lot (I mean A LOT) of new information. I would say these three months were a period of constant learn.
I had no fixed schedule, about time to go to work, or leave. Essentially they ask everybody to stay on site on the core hours 10am-12pm and 2pm-5pm, but mainly is like: since you get your work done, do your schedule! This was REALLY NICE, as I have huge problems on waking up early on the morning!
About Location - Redmond/Seattle/Washington
Living in Redmond is probably not the best experience somebody could expect from an exchange. The city is too calm, almost everything is closed after 9pm and has no night life at all. I would dare to say that the most exciting thing you'll probably find there is Microsoft!
Although it, Seattle is a great city, just 20min away. It's beautiful, with some nice landmarks (as Space Needle) and lots of places to visit.
For my Brazilian friends, don't think Seattle is as big as São Paulo or Rio de Janeiro! Though Seattle is the biggest city around Redmond, don't expect it to be the biggest commercial center you've ever seen.
Redmond is also close to Vancouver (Canada) - 4 hours driving - and has many other small cities around, e.g. Kirkland and Bellevue, that really worth to visit.
In other words, since Redmond is not alone in the map, I don't think living there is a problem (you can also choose to live in Seattle, if you can afford commuting 1h per day).
Impressions about the company:
First of all, I want to be clear on saying that this is the point of view of an INTERN. I strongly believe that things are different when you're on a full time position (some better, some worse).
I also would like to say that prior to the internship, I wasn't sympathized with Microsoft, as a consequence of being closer to the open-source world than to MS products - something cultural.
Working on MS I could realize things I didn't thought before: Microsoft is everywhere! operational systems, servers, Office, mobiles, MP3 players, hardwares, video-games, databases, internet, browser, instant messages, project management, health care, anti-virus, robotics, programming languages, research, and lots and lots of kinds of products I couldn't enumerate here.
I could realize that almost everybody won't be rich working to MS, but , instead, employees may have a comfortable life and enjoy their jobs!
I figured out that MS employees don't need to care about Health Care costs, what's a BIG DEAL in US, specially when you have a family, with children. Everybody is very excited about that - they say it's the best Health Plan in US (Unfortunately, interns don't enjoy of that benefit).
I could see that if you like technology someway, you are going to find your place at MS. Changing team and/or division are more normal than I could imagine before. This is really nice, because gives you the opportunity of changing team, instead of company - keeping your stability. Further, since different teams are likely to be totally different (imagine somebody moving from the SQL Server Team - database - to the XBOX Team - video game), you're going to experience a completely new job.
I also figured out that employees have a well planned career, with often reviews to track how things are going on with their goals. In my case, during my internship, I had weekly 1:1 meetings with my manager, in which we discussed the internship's commitments and schedule - this was completely essential for a successful internship and I think it helps a lot in a career - specially for the employee to know where is he/she going.
I felt people from MS specially smarts, hard workers and very respectful regarding each other competency and intelligence - never saw anybody underestimating somebody else (even interns, that are suppose to be less experienced).
Specially for being present on some MS Research exhibitions, I started seeing MS as a innovative company that creates technology.
Overall, I'm amazed about MS as a company to work on! I will definitely consider to come back as full-time employee - after college graduation. I had an awesome internship experience there and advise people to have this experience too.
Further, the exchange experience, to work in other country than mine, in a work environment with people from all around the world is something priceless.
Everything was perfect! Congrats MS.
