Steven Sinofsky's Microsoft TechTalk : Announcements

Next steps for blogging...

steven_sinofsky — Tue, 28 Mar 2006 11:00:00 GMT

Greetings,

I've recently changed jobs at Microsoft and decided that this would be a good time to take a break from external blogging. I started a blog inside the firewall (using the beta of SharePoint no less!) and am going to focus there for a while. There's lots to talk about with the members of the team I joined and thought it would be better to do so internally.

I suspect I will be back as this has been a great experience. I am very appreciative of all the supportive mail and comments, and of course to all those college students who are helping us have a record-breaking year hiring the best and brightest to join our product team!

As always, please feel free to use the contact link to get in touch.

Thank you,

Steven

By the way ... Office "12" Beta 1 is live

steven_sinofsky — Thu, 17 Nov 2005 08:47:00 GMT

Just thought I'd let folks know that Office "12" Beta 1 went live today. We're pretty excited about the product and getting it into customer hands.

Way to go team!

Have a great semester and welcome to Microsoft ...

steven_sinofsky — Sun, 28 Aug 2005 21:37:00 GMT

Most of our interns have packed up and headed back to school. Fall semester is always a magical time at university -- the sense of renewal, the good weather, seeing all your classmates. Have a great semester! We'll see many of you returning as full time employees or as returning intern. You know how to get hold of me if you have any questions!

With every summer we also finish up welcoming all of our new hires that joined us over the past few weeks. Many chose to take a month or two off between school and full time work (well deserved) so are just starting to join us. The energy and ideas that our new hires bring us each summer is awesome. Welcome! You're joining at a great time as we get close to a beta release of Office "12" and all the exciting work we'll show at the PDC.

--Steven

Oopsie -- anonymous comments turned on

steven_sinofsky — Wed, 10 Aug 2005 21:57:00 GMT

Anonymous comments are now enabled. Sorry about that! --Steven

Office Intern Party 2005

steven_sinofsky — Thu, 21 Jul 2005 05:20:00 GMT

Seattle: July 20, 6:30PM

Just got back from our our intern party and Jillian's which is a great place on Seattle's Lake Union. Every year we host the interns from the Office team with unlimited games, food, and (legal) drinks. This year also features a big screen XBOX and DDR, which I learned we have quite a few experts--let's give it up for the Party People!

The party is amazing since it is a chance to meet all the interns in a cool environment and get to talk in depth about their projects and the good time folks are having at Microsoft. With over 50 different colleges represented (including Cornell!) there is an incredible cross-section of schools from US, Canada, and Mexico and of course students from all over the world. One cool story this year is that two of our interns who are from India and went to grade school together, but actually ended up at different high schools and colleges actually ran into each other and work 20 feet apart on the Office team--now that's a cool experience! We also had a number of local high school interns as well, which is super cool. Also present at the party are all the vice presidents in the Office group (a couple of them former interns) who also join in for many of the intern events.

Of course the coolest is hearing about all the projects folks are working on. Interns in Office work on real features, real code, and real software that we will ship in the next release of Office (code named Office12, due to ship in 2006). In a future blog, I'll share some of the types of projects folks work on, but right now all the features are under wraps until we start talking in public about Office12. Our projects are on all the information worker software used by over 400M people -- Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook, OneNote, InfoPath, Publisher, Project, SharePoint, Content Management Server, Visio, Live Meeting, Live Communications, FrontPage (which is how I'm typing this entry), and of course all the core Office shared features that go into all the products.

Thank so much to all the interns for such a great time, and to the folks I beat in pool, I'm really sorry I am such a shark!

I wanted to include a few pictures from the party on my MSN Space.

See you soon,

Steven

PS: Tomorrow is Q&A with all the interns -- I got a lot of challenging questions this year. Check back for some of them and some discussion.

Welcome to TechTalk!

steven_sinofsky — Wed, 20 Jul 2005 02:15:00 GMT

Welcome!

One day in graduate school I decided that more school in computer science wasn’t really for me so I sent pulled together my resume and sent it in to the address on a copy of Microsoft Word for the Macintosh. A few weeks later I found myself going through the arduous interview process. And before I knew it I received an offer to be a software design engineer. I accepted.

I wanted to start this blog to share information and views about how Microsoft recruits and hires college graduates, and what a career at Microsoft is like, at least from one perspective. I invite questions, points, and counter-points. I’m excited to use this forum to have a discussion about college hiring at Microsoft. The name TechTalk comes from the series of seminars we do during the summer for interns at Microsoft--one of the most fun times of the year for me is to get to present to this group and learn from them how they feel about the work we're doing and the future of Microsoft.

By way of introduction, my name is Steven Sinofsky and I am a senior vice president at Microsoft in the Office group. You can read my "official" bio on http://www.microsoft.com/presspass/exec/ssinofsky. I’ve worked on Microsoft Office since Office 4.2d (the last 16 bit release). I’ve been a program manager and a software design engineer, in addition to a general manager.

I was hired by Microsoft out of graduate school at the University of Massachusetts. Before that I was an undergraduate at Cornell University. I’m a Cornellian through and through as folks I work with will attest to.

This kicks off the TechTalk blog. We’re right in the thick of intern season which is super energizing for me. So check back and I’ll be updating folks on what’s up with college hiring at Microsoft.

--Steven Sinofsky