Channel 9 Forums - Coffeehouse - Visual Studio Core Team Biographies

Coffeehouse - Visual Studio Core Team Biographies

aaronbrethorst — Mon, 19 Apr 2004 18:47:01 GMT

I just wanted to let everyone know that the Visual Studio Core team here at Microsoft has put up a biography website on MSDN. There are 18 of us up there currently, and we hope to add more over time. We'd love some feedback on what we've placed online, and we hope that this helps to put more of a real face on some of the people producing Whidbey.

You can find the biographies at http://msdn.microsoft.com/vstudio/team/bios/. We hope you find them interesting.

Coffeehouse - Visual Studio Core Team Biographies

ZippyV — Mon, 19 Apr 2004 19:22:45 GMT

aaronbrethorst wrote:

We hope you find them interesting.

Not really: The most important part 'The Salary' is missing and some people look like little candymen.

Coffeehouse - Visual Studio Core Team Biographies

aaronbrethorst — Mon, 19 Apr 2004 19:57:02 GMT

We look like little candymen? You mean this guy? (http://msdn.microsoft.com/vstudio/art/team/VSBioGeneric.jpg).

Yeah, the little candyman(tm) guy is a little dull. The reasoning there is that some VSCore team members don't feel comfortable having a picture of themselves online.

Coffeehouse - Visual Studio Core Team Biographies

prog_dotnet — Mon, 19 Apr 2004 19:57:41 GMT

To the public at large, one generally dont know anything about the people behind the software. And you even get their email adresses...that is awsome..
if you have something in peticular you want to adress, you could write them diretcly.

And I do find the linking of bloggs a nice feature..

By the way: Why do you have a More.. link...One can click the persons name also. There is no
need for two links to the same information.
( when i click on Amnon Horowitz, i only get Sorry, we were unable to service your request)

Coffeehouse - Visual Studio Core Team Biographies

ZippyV — Mon, 19 Apr 2004 20:11:41 GMT

aaronbrethorst wrote:

The reasoning there is that some VSCore team members don't feel comfortable having a picture of themselves online.

Me neither.

As long as their code is stable, they don't have to worry!

Coffeehouse - Visual Studio Core Team Biographies

Jeremy W — Mon, 19 Apr 2004 20:17:13 GMT

Is the PM > SDE ratio normally that skewed? Or is it just that the Core Team is more PM-related, and SDE's are pulled in as required?

Beyond that, the "more" link is good, don't take it away. Redundant? Sure, but far more useable. Imagine if you had a screen reader.

Coffeehouse - Visual Studio Core Team Biographies

sbc — Mon, 19 Apr 2004 20:44:18 GMT

aaronbrethorst wrote:

We look like little candymen? You mean this guy? (http://msdn.microsoft.com/vstudio/art/team/VSBioGeneric.jpg).

Yeah, the little candyman(tm) guy is a little dull. The reasoning there is that some VSCore team members don't feel comfortable having a picture of themselves online.

Perhaps there could be caricatures made.

Coffeehouse - Visual Studio Core Team Biographies

redvamp128 — Mon, 19 Apr 2004 20:52:08 GMT

Well overal I like the idea- and the adding of the peoples RSS feed if they have a blog is great.

Got a curious question have not counted them- but overal what is the Female to Male Team Members ratio.
I am still trying to disprove the "Homer Simpson is a programer theory"http://channel9.msdn.com/ShowPost.aspx?PostID=300

Also have another question- you may have to converse with your team. Overal how many hours do you people spend in your office (at work working)? Or Do you rotate as a shift?

Also posting your teams bios also shows the great statement that JewelyaZ stated"There ARE lots of smart women who work at Microsoft, I promise you. "

Followed by the comment Charles made...."This is absolutely true! We need to do a better job of making this obvious. Stay tuned for upcoming videos of the female brains behind the scenes. With what we've posted so far, you'd think only men work at Microsoft... Time to change this pattern."

So by your team posting thier bios up this helps.

Coffeehouse - Visual Studio Core Team Biographies

dpen2000 — Mon, 19 Apr 2004 21:14:25 GMT

Why do all the women bar brave Sara Ford elect to be represented by green and yellow marsians?

DP

Coffeehouse - Visual Studio Core Team Biographies

aaronbrethorst — Mon, 19 Apr 2004 21:15:19 GMT

The PM : SDE ratio really isn't skewed throughout the entire group; the majority of people who wrote a bio for the initial launch of this website turned out to be Program Managers. Hopefully over time we'll add more of the overall team to the site, and reduce the apparent skewing in the process .

Coffeehouse - Visual Studio Core Team Biographies

aaronbrethorst — Mon, 19 Apr 2004 21:23:02 GMT

I don't know what the male:female ratio is in VSCore, but I assume it's pretty close to the company average, which is 75/25 male/female (http://www.microsoft.com/presspass/inside_ms.asp).

Personally, I work 50 +/- 10 hours per week. I can't speak for the rest of the VSCore team, but I think that's predominantly true. I usually work 9-10 hours / weekday, and then I'll spend a couple hours Saturday and Sunday keeping up on email and taking care of any issues that fell off my plate during the week. Some weeks I'll work less. It depends on what else I have going on on a day-to-day basis. My girlfriend is moving back to Seattle in early June (she's finishing up her English degree at present), and that will undoubtedly require me to re-evaluate when and where I work.

Coffeehouse - Visual Studio Core Team Biographies

sbc — Mon, 19 Apr 2004 21:27:02 GMT

dpen2000 wrote:

Why do all the women bar brave Sara Ford elect to be represented by green and yellow marsians?

DP

Maybe they are Although I have seen someone with a paper bag over her head (not on the bios page but on this forum)
Interesting how one of the team does not have an email and another email is not @microsoft.com

Hope you don't get lots of spam thanks to putting up your email addresses - what spam filtering is used, or do you just block everyone not in your contacts list? Must be a nightmare to get loads of email (and spend hours going through it). I suppose you use RSS and MSIMN to communicate more than email?

Coffeehouse - Visual Studio Core Team Biographies

Jeremy W — Mon, 19 Apr 2004 21:42:50 GMT

aaronbrethorst wrote:

The PM : SDE ratio really isn't skewed throughout the entire group; the majority of people who wrote a bio for the initial launch of this website turned out to be Program Managers. Hopefully over time we'll add more of the overall team to the site, and reduce the apparent skewing in the process .

Good to know. I mean, I'm more of a PM than an SDE these days anyways, but I just found it funny that it was very weighted in the PM direction

Coffeehouse - Visual Studio Core Team Biographies

lars — Mon, 19 Apr 2004 21:59:05 GMT

I also noticed that just about everyone was a manager of some sort. What is the total number of people working on Visual Studio?

Coffeehouse - Visual Studio Core Team Biographies

aaronbrethorst — Mon, 19 Apr 2004 21:59:45 GMT

I'm not entirely sure why Jason decided to put his personal email address on the bios website instead of his Microsoft one. It's worth mentioning, though, that no one actually had to put their email address on the bios website; it was completely by choice that any of us did it. And please do take advantage of them there if you feel a need to .

As far as email management goes, this is definitely an ongoing process. I have 490 pieces of email in my inbox at present, and I really need to filter it down to < 100. Omar Shahine, a Mac Business Unit guy down in Silicon Valley, had a great blog posting about this issue a while back.

Coffeehouse - Visual Studio Core Team Biographies

Jeremy W — Mon, 19 Apr 2004 22:25:19 GMT

I was under the impression Microsoft was big into GTD (Getting Things done) training. It's a really interesting way to look at your Inbox. I know Robert Scoble is big into it (as are a few others).

Coffeehouse - Visual Studio Core Team Biographies

sbc — Mon, 19 Apr 2004 22:26:51 GMT

aaronbrethorst wrote:

As far as email management goes, this is definitely an ongoing process. I have 490 pieces of email in my inbox at present, and I really need to filter it down to < 100. Omar Shahine, a Mac Business Unit guy down in Silicon Valley, had a great blog posting about this issue a while back.

That must take a while to go through. What is needed is some kind of automatic filter. Perhaps Google GMail is going in the right direction in terms of email. Sounds very promising, I'm sure 1000MB is very tempting to some.

Coffeehouse - Visual Studio Core Team Biographies

OldManCoyote — Mon, 19 Apr 2004 23:23:52 GMT

You guys should re-add in an Easter Egg! I know its not MS's policy now to add them in, but still...

It was fun to see all the people's names on the v1.51 floating around on a 3D background.

Coffeehouse - Visual Studio Core Team Biographies

chuawenching — Tue, 20 Apr 2004 02:41:23 GMT

(http://msdn.microsoft.com/vstudio/art/team/VSBioGeneric.jpg).
--> Cute candyman! Yummy

Thanks for sharing the link. Glad to see the team's bio.

Coffeehouse - Visual Studio Core Team Biographies

yag — Tue, 20 Apr 2004 03:22:12 GMT

Lars - Program Managers typically don't manage people - they're managing features. Lead Program Managers or Group Program Managers typically do have direct reports.

yag

Coffeehouse - Visual Studio Core Team Biographies

stephbu — Tue, 20 Apr 2004 05:29:52 GMT

Yeah PM's write down ideas that devs would otherwise forget when they thought of the next great feature,

Just kidding

Coffeehouse - Visual Studio Core Team Biographies

CplCarrot — Tue, 20 Apr 2004 13:02:22 GMT

Thanks for that now we have faces to mutter praise at or shout curses at. Could the next release have a grouping by team as well as name.

Charlie

Coffeehouse - Visual Studio Core Team Biographies

jerbos — Tue, 20 Apr 2004 22:02:05 GMT

CplCarrot wrote:

Thanks for that now we have faces to mutter praise at or shout curses at. Could the next release have a grouping by team as well as name.

Charlie

We are looking at ways to do interesting things like team grouping and search in the future. It really depends on how much people like the biography idea and find it to be of value. I want to make sure we are investing time into projects that are useful. If this is a popular idea then I will continue to pursue the creation of interesting features like grouping.

Coffeehouse - Visual Studio Core Team Biographies

jerbos — Tue, 20 Apr 2004 22:09:03 GMT

prog_dotnet wrote:

when i click on Amnon Horowitz, i only get Sorry, we were unable to service your request

Sorry about the link to Amnon Horowitz. This has now been fixed.