David Smith (and others) - Meeting the Interns

Excellent, high energy video. How come I didn't intern at Microsoft. Oh, yeah, could've been that 2.8 GPA.  These guys/gals must have mad skillz.

PS. Did I hear correctly? That interns can be PMs?

What will Microsoft be shipping in the next year and half that will affect half billion to a billion people?

Great interview, the internship interview process sounds scary.

Andre Da Costa wrote:

What will Microsoft be shipping in the next year and half that will affect half billion to a billion people?

Great interview, the internship interview process sounds scary.

Are you forgetting the new Visual Notepad replacement in Vista? Huh?

I was an intern PM in Windows Servicability this summer. I don't really understand the animosity towards what interns work on exhibited in this forum, and having met both David and Caleb, I can say that they're good, hardworking souls and taking broad slashes at all of the MS interns is a bit excessive, I think. I know that I, at least, learned quite a bit this summer and that the things that I worked on were done right and are going to make a difference.

scobleizer wrote:

Orbit86: I use OneNote quite a bit and we used it on our book too and it sure didn't suck for me. It'd be nice to see if you could post constructive criticism here. Translation: how did it suck?

Ill second that. I’ve used OneNote all year in school and am extremely happy with it. There’s no other program that I know about that comes anywhere near matching its capabilities.

I've tried onenote, I love it. But I wish i had a tablet pc .

Nice interview...in front of the Microsoft conference centre (if i am not mistaken). What really cracks me up is "What is PDC ?" (2:43). Come on, its one of the largest developer conferences and anybody who has got to do anything with Microsoft knows about it. Really great to see all the energy and enthusiasm amongst the interns.

scobleizer wrote:

Orbit86: I use OneNote quite a bit and we used it on our book too and it sure didn't suck for me. It'd be nice to see if you could post constructive criticism here. Translation: how did it suck?

I agree. Its one of the best tools, specially if coupled with a Tablet. I have used Onenote to take notes at school and its simply amazing.

Do they give intern high school students?

Somehow I missed this clock Last time F visited the Ms campus. Would be sure not to miss it this time during the summit.

billatq wrote:

I was an intern PM in Windows Servicability this summer. I don't really understand the animosity towards what interns work on exhibited in this forum...

I hope my question of intern PMs didn't convey any animosity. I certainly don't have any. Maybe it's my misunderstanding of what a PM really is. I'm equating the position to a group leader, or a head developer. That's why I'm surprise to hear the term "intern PM" which would sound like an oxymoron.

I was a high school intern 8-9 years ago; back then it was a program for local (i.e. in the Seattle area) high schools only.

scobleizer wrote:

IRenderable: yes, but high school interns seem to be rarer. The Internet Explorer team had a high school intern this year, for instance, but he was a guy who made a name for himself finding security exploits in IE.

My good friend Mark Hammond was an Intern in high school and college (he was local to Seattle, and went to Caltech) and worked on IE 3,4,5 & 6.

He's now up in Boston doing an NLP startup, he just recently quit MSFT b/c his wife is getting a PhD up at Yale.

He's someone I'll introduce you too later, Robert -- he's sure to keep making waves (he's about 26 now).

..and I'm kicking myself even harder.

Hey, Scoble. Spread the love, man. There's a quiet guy in that video that doesn't get to say anything.

Very cool guys, thats great that you get to meet some of the MS Brass. Very inspirational video, Im moving to WA next week just so that i can be close to Microsoft and goto school Hope to see you guys next summer (Crosses fingers he gets picked for next intern cycle)

Orbit86 wrote:

no wonder OneNote sucks

Haha. Well put.

- Steve

MSU represent!  Actually, as big of a school as MSU is, I've seen David Smith around campus and worked with him for a short time.

Orbit86:  I can't even imagine using OneNote without a tablet, I'm sure it still has some useful features but with a tablet it is amazing.  Although I can still think of a few improvements:

a) lasso select, rectangular select doesn't work well with my sloppy crooked handwriting

b) basic shape creator, i'd like to box/circle things neatly.

c) better TIFF support.  I scan my textbooks into a multi-layer OCR'd TIFF which I can read/search/annotate in Journal but not in OneNote.

But anyway, excellent video and I've heard first-hand from my brother that interning at Microsoft is a great experience and hopefully one day I'll experience it too.

Scoble,

A huge fan of Channel9 and I have been following it from the beginning, although this is the first time I have actually replied to a video.

I would love to try and intern for MS but unfortunately, MS Redmond won't accept interns from outside of North America. This means everyone here (in Ireland)  doing their placement, which is a full year of work with a software company, are advised to go to MS Ireland in Dublin.

I have friends there this year who say it is amazing but I would still love to apply for a year with Microsoft in the US as I would pretty much like to leave Ireland and get out to the states for a year.

Is there any chance that Microsoft might be changing its Undergraduate recruiting practices in the future? Or do you have the e-mail address of somebody I could contact for more information?

Kevin

Honestly, OneNote needs a Tablet PC to be really powerful and productive, I rarely use it (Once in a Blue Moon).

Hey guys!

I know Dave from MSU and Caleb and I were in the same group this summer (Avalon).  Both great guys.  Its good to see some Intern love here on Channel 9.

About the 'what's PDC' guy...he is wearing the very fasionable 'MS intern' shirt that is given out at NEO.  Every intern leaves with more MS cloths than non-MS cloths!

Seriously, interning at microsoft was great.  Tons of smart people, tons of stuff to do (in and outside work).  Tons of free pop.  And unlike lots of places you could intern, you actually get to work on stuff that ships.

MSU represent!

KevinB wrote:

Scoble,

A huge fan of Channel9 and I have been following it from the beginning, although this is the first time I have actually replied to a video.

I would love to try and intern for MS but unfortunately, MS Redmond won't accept interns from outside of North America. This means everyone here (in Ireland)  doing their placement, which is a full year of work with a software company, are advised to go to MS Ireland in Dublin.

I have friends there this year who say it is amazing but I would still love to apply for a year with Microsoft in the US as I would pretty much like to leave Ireland and get out to the states for a year.

Is there any chance that Microsoft might be changing its Undergraduate recruiting practices in the future? Or do you have the e-mail address of somebody I could contact for more information?

Kevin

I think you've got it all wrong Kevin.  One of the interns in my groupd this summer was from Ireland.  I think he said he had to go to England to interview, but Microsoft then flew him over to Redmond where he is right now.

I'm sure it's not as common as US interns simply because it costs them a lot more, but he said 3 guys from his class got to interview.

Orbit86 wrote:

scobleizer wrote: Orbit86: I use OneNote quite a bit and we used it on our book too and it sure didn't suck for me. It'd be nice to see if you could post constructive criticism here. Translation: how did it suck?

Because I thought I could use it to keep notes from class, organize hand outs etc etc but It's only usefull if you have a tablet pc...

I have OpenOffice 2.0 Beta on my laptop (Office 2003 on my main pc) , If I had the time I would transfer my notes to openoffice and export it to PDF (openoffice has export to pdf feature) but I could always scan notebook pages but quality is still a issue.

searchable text images like pdf and regular jpgs that have text in them would be cool or a new format like XSPF or whatever MS is called would be cool.. can you search text thats inside a image or document?

Orbit, you can organize notes and handouts, but you still need to get it INTO your computer. If you have it in digital format, OneNote'll take anything into a Page.

Export to PDF? Why would you export to PDF? And, if you CAN export to PDF, then you can bring it into OneNote, write on it, record audio, search all of it.

Just wait for the next rev of OneNote as well. It's crazy. It really matures OneNote like 3 versions!

Btw, huge congrats to the interns in this video. Any company would be privileged to have them and they should be very, very proud of where they're at and where they're headed.

If I can ever do anything to help any of them, they can always drop me a line. The world needs more kids like these.

Orbit86 wrote:

because mostly everyone has PDF and it looks more professional,cleaner than a word document

More professional? Cleaner? ...

I thought we were talking about school notes?

Also, who said anything about Word?

I was a PM intern with the Digital Documents group. The video summed most of the things in the internship program. Few salient points.

1) There are about 700 interns. Lot of diversity and we get to meet lot of people and exchange ideas.

2) Interns are treated as full time employees in most aspects.

3) Interns work on real features which are to be shipped.

4) Meeting BillG is one of the best thing in internship. Not even the full timers have this opportunity.

5) SteveB came to the intern techfest. So one could meet him too.

6) Intern program in thoughtfully organized with lots of activities interspersed like
   
   - attending Baseball games of mariners
   - Trip to Mt.rainier, Mt Baker, st helens
   - White water rafting in white salmon river
   - skydiving
   - Barbeque at BillG's house
   - Intern techfest
   - soccer matches   
not all are organized by the Intern Program, but are initiatives taken by the interns themselves.

7) some times your require to put 10-14 hours of work.

8) Results/products matter a lot, so put 3 hours and produce it or put 14 hours. Quality matters a lot.

9) Your co-workers are super intelligent guys. The discussions in corridors are really intellectually charged.

10) People here are really passionate about their work and the company

Overall a fantastic experience.