Ordered Chaos...That was the first impression I got when I started to work fulltime at Microsoft Corp. I’m a new member of the Dynamics CRM team; an awesome assemble of people, all of them smart, all of them peculiar (in a good sense), and all of them with tons of stuff to do everyday working in one of the most unorthodox environments I have ever being at.
You may have heard that the work atmosphere at MS is atypical in the sense that they expect you to drive your own work (and the work of others too); specially if you are in a Program Manager position as I am. Well, this is true to the EXTREME. They literally let you find your own way with as little couching as possible. Don’t get me wrong, they do help you a lot but you have to seek your own help.
The first week with the team I honestly doubted if wanted to work in such a fast pace environment with so much ambiguity. Although I previously did an Internship here the circumstances were not quite comparable with those of a full timer. Everybody seems to think that you already know what you have to do. The assumption is: if you don’t ask questions then you must know the answers.
So you may think: “then simply ask questions.” Well, it’s not that simple. From my point of view an integral part of being successful at Microsoft, or anywhere else, is how efficient are you to assimilate tons (yes, I’m not exaggerating) of information and use that to find your own answers. Once you have a background then you are good to go with your peers and enrich your knowledge with their ideas. A PM at MS, at least in Dynamics CRM, is supposed to be everything and nothing at the same time:
A leader; but you are not the boss of anybody.
A coordinator; but you are also part of the working crew.
A technical folk; but you are not the subject matter expert
And most importantly a decision maker that is held accountable for the success or the failure of any of the projects he/she is involved with; always making sure that the value proposition that your product should deliver to your customers is kept.
Fortunately by the second and third weeks of my work here and was able to keep up with the pace and started being productive; actually I’m quite happy because even arriving at the very end of the milestone I’m going to be able to have a couple of features shipped with the product J.
It’s really nice to, little by little, blend with the team and realize that the order that I was looking for is inside the chaos of everyday work.
You may have heard that the work atmosphere at MS is atypical in the sense that they expect you to drive your own work (and the work of others too); specially if you are in a Program Manager position as I am. Well, this is true to the EXTREME. They literally let you find your own way with as little couching as possible. Don’t get me wrong, they do help you a lot but you have to seek your own help.
The first week with the team I honestly doubted if wanted to work in such a fast pace environment with so much ambiguity. Although I previously did an Internship here the circumstances were not quite comparable with those of a full timer. Everybody seems to think that you already know what you have to do. The assumption is: if you don’t ask questions then you must know the answers.
So you may think: “then simply ask questions.” Well, it’s not that simple. From my point of view an integral part of being successful at Microsoft, or anywhere else, is how efficient are you to assimilate tons (yes, I’m not exaggerating) of information and use that to find your own answers. Once you have a background then you are good to go with your peers and enrich your knowledge with their ideas. A PM at MS, at least in Dynamics CRM, is supposed to be everything and nothing at the same time:
A leader; but you are not the boss of anybody.
A coordinator; but you are also part of the working crew.
A technical folk; but you are not the subject matter expert
And most importantly a decision maker that is held accountable for the success or the failure of any of the projects he/she is involved with; always making sure that the value proposition that your product should deliver to your customers is kept.
Fortunately by the second and third weeks of my work here and was able to keep up with the pace and started being productive; actually I’m quite happy because even arriving at the very end of the milestone I’m going to be able to have a couple of features shipped with the product J.
It’s really nice to, little by little, blend with the team and realize that the order that I was looking for is inside the chaos of everyday work.
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