It was pretty heavy stuff but to be honest the guys were so good, they made it sound like fun most of the time. Actually they opened with a lawyer joke that's too long to tell here, but it was funny :)
After the NEO concluded I got to finally pick up my blue badge, the blue badge is a card key that has my photo, name, and employee number on it. It is also a smart card and is used to open doors of all MS facilities I'm allowed to visit (which is basically all buildings except maybe some server rooms and stuff like that).
There is another type of badge, the orange badge, which is for contractors and vendors dealing with MS who need to stay on Campus for prolonged periods of time.
This is how it looks like, I did erase my employee number as I don't really know how "disclosable" the information is :)
The best thing is I got to meet my team for the first time, I met with Vasili Zolotov who is the person I'm gonna be reporting to. He was so very friendly, he showed me around, introduced me to all people, and we had lunch together at the cafeteria (which btw is very very very good) Most of the people were very busy as the team is preparing to ship SQL Server 2005 very soon, still Vasili took so much time out of his schedule to help me get onboard.
I was then shown to my office and computer, I have a pretty decent machine, 3.2GHz processor, 2 GB of Ram, 160GB SATA hdd and a Radeon X300 VGA card. I asked if I could get a natural keyboard and he told me I could talk to the administrative assistant for our team.
So while I'm at it I asked her for a second monitor too, she told me I'm gonna get my second monitor and my natural keyboard tomorrow morning :) She also gave me a smart card reader that I should connect to my computer at home (or laptop) and use to read my blue card key to enable me to access the MS intranet and work from anywhere in the world :)
I've also learnt that we have a huge event planned for the team to celebrate shipping SQL Server 2005 when it does ship (very soon), it's gonna be a skiing trip :) Now that's what I call warm welcome :D
In the mean time I have so much to do, set up my computer, settle in, read a lot, and get ready to be productive :) I've heard that they never expect you to be productive at work before around 6 weeks from your start date. Leaves me plenty of time but there is also plenty to do.
I hope I hadn't got rusty during this last month of unemployment :)
Wish me luck.
4 comments:
Chris,
I have read your Blogs :) interesting, Good luck man you deserve it.
Missing Unreal Sessions :o) and tracking you down :oP
Yours,
MAG
Reading your blog has became a daily habit :)
So was wondering what does the setting look like in MS? Does every team has a place of its own with cunicles or what?
Yala show them the real V0od0o ba2a and make us proud.
Hazim
Every day I read your blog you make me feel too bad not to be there :D:D:D, kidding.
Any way I hope to be able to catch you before the event of SQL Server Yukon shipping, and by the way, Microsoft doesn't contain cubicles at all, every one has his own office in his own room, or at max share this room with one or two persons, but nearly every one has his own room.
By the way, after reading your blog yesterday, I tok the decision and talked to Soner Terek himself, and Iam amazed how much the guy is nice and cool, really I feel well how they are dealing with you out there now :)
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