Want to make a difference? Try fighting spam
Microsoft is going through some revisions in its HR process. This is a story that has been reported in the press, you can also read a little bit about it on Mini Microsoft. I went to the internal blog and our head of HR, Lisa Brummel, is soliciting feedback about what it's like to work at Microsoft.
I have read through some of the comments and many employees expressed their frustration that they feel they are not making a difference in their profession (ie, what they do has no real impact). This is a problem that I would expect that all major corporations have, and in a company of 70,000 people it is not surprising to see some employees feel this way.
As a spam fighter, I know for a fact that my actions do make an impact for our customers. In fact, they have an impact every single day. As a matter of fact, sometimes my actions make too much of an impact and I find myself scrambling to fine tune spam fighting strategies. I can measure what some of my spam fighting strategies do, and I know that some policies that I have implemented have blocked over a billion spam messages. If I had a penny for each spam I blocked, I think I can safely say that I would have more money than Bill Gates.
Fighting spam makes an impact to end users. Issues come up every single day that have to be dealt with quickly because they affect our end users' experience. Indeed, one of the biggest issues we deal with is that there is so much to do it is virtually impossible to get it all done. Still, we do the best we can because we know what we do does make a difference.
