Diego Vega : Working at Microsoft

Stretching myself on the wrong axis

divega — Sat, 10 Nov 2007 02:59:00 GMT

Something you need to learn as a Program Manager at Microsoft is how to scale. This mean that you need to drive issues, multitask, excel at doing it, choose your fights, etc.

Last week I tried a different approach that kind of worked when I was younger: stretching on the time axis. I found that it doesn't work for me as well as it used to do.

So, this is my word of advise: If you build a big backlog, and you are executing under your expectations, don't stop sleeping. Two reasons:

1. The more you sleep, the more clear your mind is when you are awake.

2. The problem is you are doing something wrong. Either you are spending much time solving the wrong problems or the expectations are too high.

So, if you are lucky enough to work in a place like Microsoft (with thousands of talented people around), do yourself a favor: Raise your hand, ask for help.

This is what happened since 10/23

divega — Tue, 06 Nov 2007 02:24:00 GMT

I was in the kitchen close to my office having a coffee and mulling about what great thing I could do next about the blog. Then I came here and I saw this comment by Guillaume (a good friend in disguise), that translated from Spanish means "so, what happened since 10/23?". I guess I will try to lower the bar a bit and just tell what is happening:

Well, I have been mostly learning what it means to be a PM at Microsoft, and in particular in Data Programmability. I have been sharing my days with this group of super smart people that is working on shipping this great product (we are close to beta 3). The atmosphere is very interesting and it is easy to be overwhelmed with the heaps of information I get exposed to everyday. Not only I am learning about the Entity Framework stack but also about our LINQ implementation, about our procedures, about our branching strategies, thread modeling, driving features as a PM, filing bugs, status reports, etc.

I am waiting until I feel more confident with the stack before I do some more technical posting. I am ok with going with the basics, but I just don't want to post any inaccurate information.

In the meanwhile, life here is nice. The family is adapting very well. We have most of our stuff solved, have a car, rent an apartment on the east side. I am riding The Connector everyday to work, so I can start early and finish late with email... Which is a good thing, isn't it?

By the way, I see in Outlook that right now I have 1223 messages in my inbox and 443 in my sent items folder. Seems a little unbalanced :)

Hello Data

divega — Tue, 23 Oct 2007 12:35:59 GMT

My name is Diego Vega and I am a new Program Manager in the Data Programmability team.

This is my first post as a Microsoft employee!

I came here from an ISV/small software company world: A world in which data access is such an important thing as breathing, and yet, it is seldom done unconsciously or even comfortably.

At Microsoft, they (oh, should I now say "we"?) have been investing for many years in this space, trying to come up with easier approaches, more suitable abstractions, and merely better tools.

I personally think we have largely succeeded in improving our offers and in simplifying our customers job each time. From ODBC, to ADO.NET and more recently LINQ, Microsoft's contribution has been very much influential.

The latest fruit of this investment is the Entity Framework, a piece of technology that I think could affect the way we do and perceive data access in a magnitude comparable to what relational databases did more than 20 years ago.

I am very excited to be part of the team that is building this technology and I can hardly think of a better place to be at Microsoft at this time!

But as I have said, "we" (as in us, nous, nosotros) have been building this for years and "I" (as in me, je, yo) have just arrived. Only groking it well (and simultaneously learning how to be a good PM), will be a great challenge.

Therefore, I intend to use this blog as learning tool for myself, by compiling my impressions, code samples, and whatever I find pivotal in understanding the technology. In my experience, you learn more when you explain things. Can't explain why :)

Hopefully, in sharing my learning progress, I will also make a small contribution in simplifying your job.