The PowerPoint Team Blog : Interns

Listening to the PowerPoint Interns: A Farewell Interview

RicB — Wed, 27 Aug 2008 08:09:16 GMT

As promised last week, one more surprise.

We wrap up our coverage of the PowerPoint 2008 Summer Interns with a real change of pace. An audio roundtable discussion about their experiences on the team, what it was like being part of the development of the next version of PowerPoint, and what they've learned while they were here.

It's a fun conversation, hope you enjoy it. Click below to get to the podcast posting.

My PowerPoint Summer: Five Intern Tales

Pictured at left: Mike Rodgers, Trevor Florence, Nirav Sanghani, Luiz Pereira, and Jesse Harvey

Summer Interns: Luiz Pereira

RicB — Wed, 20 Aug 2008 08:17:05 GMT

We wind up up in our series of posts by PowerPoint's summer interns with Software Development Engineer Luiz Pereira. But check back in a bit for one final intern surprise.

My name is Luiz Pereira and I’m nearing the end of my internship as a Software Development Engineer (SDE) in PowerPoint’s Multimedia team.

I’m currently finishing up my Master’s in Computer Science at Stanford (just a quarter left!), with a concentration in Human-Computer Interaction. I got my Bachelor’s in Electrical Engineering also at Stanford in 2007. I was born and raised in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil and moved to the Bay Area in 2003 for college. Most of my family’s still back in Brazil, except for my sister who currently lives in New York.

Working on PowerPoint is extremely exciting, since you have a chance to develop features for a product that is used by hundreds of millions of people. Even the smallest changes have a huge user impact and as an intern you have the opportunity to make enormous contributions to the product, which have tremendous user impact.

Being a PowerPoint intern, you really feel like you’re a full-time employee. I spend my days implementing features, working with testers to get them tested, working with program managers to refine feature specifications, performing code reviews and keeping track of bugs assigned to me. As an intern, you really get a taste of what it’s like to be a full-time engineer, so it’s a great opportunity to determine whether Microsoft is a good match for you.

Microsoft is very accommodating and they want their interns to have the best time here. For example, they let me do a shorter, 10-week internship instead of the standard 12 weeks, which gives me plenty of time to travel at the end of summer. They also flew the Silicon Valley Campus interns up to the main headquarters in Redmond, where they treated us to an event-filled weekend. They are interested in letting us explore the company and different teams, in order to find the best match for our talent and learn about the diversity of projects in the company.

Last summer I was working at Google’s New York office and the year before I was working at Yahoo’s Los Angeles office. It’s very exciting be in Silicon Valley for the summer, since it is the place to be for technology. There is also a lot to do in the Bay Area. Regardless of whether you like big cities, culture and nightlife (like me!); sports, perfect weather and being outdoors; or cutting-edge technology and entrepreneurship, you’ll find something to do around here.

Interning at Microsoft has been an amazing opportunity and I encourage everyone to apply!

Summer Interns: Mike Rodgers

RicB — Tue, 05 Aug 2008 08:32:48 GMT

Next up in our series of posts by PowerPoint's summer interns is Software Development Engineer Mike Rodgers.

Hi there, I’m Mike Rodgers, and I’m mid-way through my twelve-week internship as a Software Development Engineer (or Dev for short) with the PowerPoint team.

I grew up in Boulder, Colorado, and I’ve spent the last four years out in California, studying Computer Science at Stanford University. I’m enrolled in a “Co-terminal” program, meaning that I’ll graduate with both a Bachelor’s and a Master’s in CS after five to six years total.

My interview process was a bit simpler than Jesse’s and Nirav’s because I was already in the Bay Area. Microsoft paid for me to rent a car, I drove out to the campus, and interviewed with four or five of the developers. Something that really impressed me about the team was that they were quite organized and didn’t mess about for very long in making their decision. They had all the info they were going to get, and they must have sat down, talked about it, and made a decision as soon as I left, because I got a call with the offer before I made it back to my dorm.

I’ve been very pleased with my internship on the PowerPoint team. Microsoft makes very little distinction between interns and full-time employees. For the time that we’re here, we have the same privileges, security access, etc. as everybody else. And the other employees treat us just the same. The internship program also puts a lot of emphasis on the personal growth of the interns – you make a contribution to the company, but the company also makes a pretty big contribution to your development as a professional.

When I was considering my different options for the summer, what really made the decision for me was everyone’s assurances that, if I worked at Microsoft, I’d get to work on a “real” project. They were telling the truth. I’ve had a variety of prior internships, and in almost all of them, I frequently felt that I was working as a code monkey on miscellaneous, unrelated odds and ends—doing the grunt-work no one else wanted to do. Or, even worse, I felt like I was working on something that the team would kind of like to have at some point in the future but that may or may not ever get used. I’ve even had my boss seem flustered that she had to come up with something new for me to do because I had completed an assignment faster than she had anticipated.

In my internship at Microsoft on the PowerPoint team, I was given a real problem of my own, and I’m writing code that is interesting, important, and that will ship with the next version of PowerPoint. It’s pretty exciting that millions of people will be using something I worked on.

Working at the SVC campus does mean there are fewer interns around, but it’s certainly got its perks. As Jesse said, the weather is unbeatable. (I actually commute by bike five days a week.) Also, Silicon Valley is an exciting place to be for techie people of a college age. A couple weeks ago, a bunch of the MS SVC Interns took on the Google Interns in a game of laser-tag. Someone needs to show them they don’t hold dominion in The Valley…

Summer Interns: Trevor Florence

RicB — Mon, 04 Aug 2008 06:32:28 GMT

Next up in our series of posts by PowerPoint's summer interns is Software Development Engineer Trevor Florence.

Hi! My name is Trevor Florence and I’m a Software Developer Engineer intern here in PowerPoint. I’m from a smallish town near Ventura California and have spent the last several years living in Utah, Chile, Seattle, and now back in California. I’m working on my Master’s in Computer Science at Brigham Young University and have a little more than a year to go.

At this point in my life, the thing that defines me and is most important to me is my family. You can see my wife, Lindsay, and me in Provo Canyon and our son, Calvin, below. He’s all set to be a future Microsoft employee! I love them both a ton and am happy to be out here with them. Microsoft has been a great company to work for this summer for me and my whole family.

In the previous post, Nirav talked about being a Program Manager. Here’s a little bit about being a Software Development Engineer.

If Nirav is the owner of his feature, then I am the architect and builder of mine. After all the requirements for a feature have been written, a developer is assigned to implement the feature. The developer writes a design document outlining a solution that encompasses the required features. Next, the document is reviewed by fellow developers who are familiar with the matter; after some feedback and revisions, a design is decided on. What remains is to implement the feature, get it reviewed by others, and submit the changes into the code base. Throw into the process some meetings, coding, compiling, testing, and debugging and you’ll get an idea of what a developer does.

Although I can’t really talk about which features I’ve worked on, I will say that many users will see what I built! Microsoft does a good job about giving interns high visibility features which is very cool.

Lindsay and I have had a blast living in Silicon Valley! The weather is great and there are lots of fun things to do in the area. Microsoft has provided lots of cool activities as well. We got to fly up to Washington, attend the company picnic, have dinner at my General Manger’s house, and lots more.

Microsoft is a really great company to work for and I’m grateful for this great opportunity!

Summer Interns: Jesse Harvey

RicB — Mon, 28 Jul 2008 04:13:51 GMT

Next up in our series of posts by PowerPoint's summer interns is Software Design Engineer Jesse Harvey.

Hello All,

My name is Jesse Harvey and I am in my seventh week as a Software Design Engineer in Test (SDET) intern with the PowerPoint team.

I was born and raised in a small town in Western New York. I am a 5^th year student at Rochester Institute of Technology (RIT) in NY working on the Computer Engineering dual degree (BS & MS) program.

RIT is a very career oriented school, requiring students to complete a full year of co-op before graduation. I spent 6 months with Xerox in Henrietta, NY and continued to work part time with them during the school year. My team was responsible for creating and maintaining Linux/Unix drivers for multifunction devices in Xerox’s Office Group. I did a fair amount of C/C++ development, build automation, informal testing and result reporting. I spent last summer with Lehman Brothers in New York City doing J2EE development for internal reporting.

My interview experience was very similar to Nirav’s; an on campus interview followed by a flight to California for some interviews with the team. As things picked up throughout my internship, I was amazed at how integrated the testers were with the entire product cycle. I have been responsible for scheduling Feature Crew dates, reviewing PM Feature Design Specs and creating Test Design Specs. A typical day consists of a variety of testing and writing documentation, as well as automation and tool development. Being a SDET provides a great balance between the PM and Dev positions; I am able to work closely with the PM and provide my perspective on the product design and behavior and at the same time I get to do some development and programming for our automation system.

The experience of interning at Microsoft’s Silicon Valley Campus (SVC) has been great so far. While I have heard there are over 1000 interns at the Redmond campus, the Bay Area has only about 100. While there isn’t always something going on down here, having fewer interns allows us to form a smaller, closer knit group of friends. Of course you can’t beat the weather in Sunny California and the tech atmosphere of Silicon Valley is great for a nerdy college kid like me.

Like most college kids, I’m up for pretty much any adventure. I like playing sports and video games as well as watching movies, being outdoors and just hanging out with friends. There’s plenty to do in the SVC area. Our group of interns is always finding fun stuff to do, including sampling the local cuisine, making trips up to Fisherman’s Wharf/Golden Gate Bridge, checking out some of the local billiards clubs, kayaking around the local lake, playing a weekly game of poker and relaxing to some good movies.

I have already learned an incredible amount from the PowerPoint team and I’m very excited for the work I’ll be doing over the upcoming weeks.