A few people have asked me why I opted to move from a Group Manager role to an architect role. Well, there are a few reasons:

1. One of the awesome things about Microsoft is that there’s a clear career path whether you manage people or don’t. So I didn’t have to go to a job where I managed more people – it’s something I love to do, don’t get me wrong – but it was nice having the option of doing something like this when the opportunity arose.
2. Community is something that always gets me excited. I “grew up” on Compuserve, user groups, conferences and the internet. Being a part of various communities is a big part of who I am. Being able to continue extending that was an amazing opportunity.
3. I missed “getting my hands dirty” with coding and architecture. It’s been a while since my Codebook days. <g> I’m really looking forward to using the things we built in Visual Studio on a day-to-day basis.
4. The architect position at Microsoft is one that involves a lot of cross-team, and cross-division influencing – and that’s another aspect that I love.
5. Finally (and this was a big one) – it’s a great team of people I’ll be working with. More about that in my next blog entry.