Hi everyone:

This is a delayed introduction for myself, let me get it started quickly.

My name is Larry. I graduated from Northwestern University in June 2002, since then I have been working @ MS on the MSDN Test team as a Software Design Engineer in Test for ... one and half years now... (wow, that's a long time!)

Life in the workplace is dramatically different from attending a college. First of all, the biggest difference is the crowd I am interacting now on daily basis is probably 10-15 years older than me on average; in addition, most of these people are REALLY good at what they are doing and they have a lot of passion for the technology. Secondly, I was once a poor student (not that bad, I had couple jobs while I was in school); but now, living on my own without parents' support and enjoy what I am learning and doing on daily basis (most of the time).

Working right after college in a big company like Microsoft is not a very easy thing. People here expect you to perform and take great responsibility to make a difference in a product. Therefore, a college hire would have a lot of pressure to perform on par with other experienced senior co-workers. This actually to me have a lot of benefits:

- Learn new technology and tools faster
- More satisfaction when getting things done (afterall, many people in the world are using the product)
- Easy access to many industry experts and gurus (yeah, I love this part)
- Great learning environment for any inexperienced person

Anyway, I will stop now. Since I am just taking a little break from work.