Before coming to MS, I worked for a small Redmond based software company (Unlike most employees, I’m a Seattle native).  I was hired to do technical support, but on the first day, I was told in passing that I would also be managing the network (probably a typical situation in a small company).  Over the two or so years I spent with the company, my job evolved out of tech support, and into software testing (I was quite fluent in MS-Test, a precursor to Visual Test).  An interesting bit of trivia is that MS-Test and the scripting language used for the Windows 3.1 SDK install program were quite similar – as a result of this, I also began writing the setup programs for the company.  I also maintained my network admin role, and as the company grew, I learned a lot about both NT networks (one of first jobs at the company was to replace the OS2 server with a hot of the presses version of NT 3.1) and Netware (we had an accounting system that was only supported when running on a Novell network).  Beginning in the summer of ‘94, the accountants began asking me to do things that didn’t seem too… ”legal” to me.  However, I did what I was asked as a good employee should.  By December, I could see the writing on the wall, and spent the Sunday after thanksgiving faxing my resume to a handful of contract agencies who had advertised in the Sunday paper.  I had absolutely no idea what kinds of jobs I was qualified for (my entire software career had been with this single company), but I thought I must have the skills to get some job somewhere.  I was pretty surprised when I received a half a dozen calls by 10:00 the next morning (I understand the world of contracting a lot more today).  I had three or four (I can’t remember exactly) interviews set up in the following two weeks.  I do remember interviewing for a few jobs I didn’t want at the time, as well as jobs I’m glad I didn’t get an offer for.

Eventually, I interviewed on the Windows 95 team.  My “contract” interview was FIVE hours.  While this is typical for a full time interview, it is not for a contract position (this was obviously a pre-lawsuit interview loop).  The details aren’t important, but I did receive a job offer, and I was extremely excited – working on win95 was about the coolest job I could think of at the time. 

Those of you with reasonable comprehension skills will recognize that I “officially” started at Microsoft in June of 1995.   However, in mid-December, I put in my notice at my previous company.  New Years Eve 1994 was my last day, and I began at Microsoft (as a contractor) on January 3rd 1995.