Trying to build some kind of a narrative #5: Some of my 5 earliest contracts (of 37) at Microsoft

by Michael S. Kaplan, published on 2015/08/26 13:54 +00:00, original URI: http://www.siao2.com/2015/08/26/8770668856267197111.aspx


Originally I came to Microsoft in the end of 1996 for a six month contract to help the Certification Systems group validate how valid the comparison between different editions of the same certification exam.

Gratuitous Microsoft logo follows....

The older art would have made more sense, but I am feeling a little lazy this morning.... ;-)

My manager Steve got me a v- alias, (v-michka), which helped me until I went fulltime dozens of contracts and years lter....

Although skeptical of the concept, we had a statistician who was sure we could do such a validation and I'd been doing similar work for publishing doctors for years so I figured the less peer reviewed world would survive such an attempt to bring rigor to a process that frankly could use something a bit more rigorous.

The group was re-organized three times as the contract was stretched out to a year and then eventually cancelled during the fourth attempt at a reorg, I was a little disappointed that the original concept was abandoned. But by then someone from DAD (Developer Access Division) Marketing wanted me to write a Microsoft Access version of the Microsoft Excel Publish to Web Wizard that like its Excel cousin would be published to the web to help prove how visionary and quick and dare I say 'Agile' Microsoft Office was being.

Even as that project was only midway through, the Microsoft Access development team (formerly the Microsoft Access test team and wizard development team) was looking for some help with a few of their wizards so they could spend less time on that messy codebase, which later became my next three contracts and then I realized that it was raining ☔ money 💵 in Redmond WA, and I decided to formally move.

FWIW (for what it's worth) that v- alias was greatly beneficial when later rules about a- (agency temps) and their obligatory hundred day vacations changed the landscape of short term work at Microsoft.

For the record, note that none of these early five contracts of the thirty seven I did had anything to do with anything of note that I later did for Microsoft, other than one bit I did unintentionally for Microsoft Access wizards localization....

And thusly my career as a Microsoft contractor had begun....


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referenced by

2015/09/15 A few sorta random things I recall about some of my past memorable, unorthodox relationships, part #2

2015/08/27 Trying to build some kind of a narrative #6: Several of the more intriguing of the other 32 (of 37) contracts at Microsoft

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