Comment Feed for It's official... (Coffeehouse on Channel 9)

Re: It's official...

PaoloM — Sat, 23 Feb 2008 06:52:33 GMT

HumanCompiler wrote:

PaoloM wrote: It's usually only a temporary solution, or if two people need to work together for some reason.

Not true (at least on our end of campus). Microsoft has been buying and building more space and over the next year or two things will loosen up a bit, but there are still a lot of peope doubled up in offices because we're short on space. When I started at Microsoft I had my own office. Then Rory joined our team and I was low man on the totum pole and he became my roommate. Since he left I've had my own office again, but I've been told that the next person we hire for our team will end up as my roommate because there's not enough space.

Yeah, it happened to me in 9, before we moved to North Campus. But it's temporary, the preferred solution is to have your own office.

However...

HumanCompiler wrote:
What's interesting though, is that while I love having my own office (Rory was great, we got along well, but just having another body in the same room as you can be distracting sometimes) our team has started experimenting with renting out a conference room for 3 days out of the week and just hammering out a feature together. Since our team is small it's worked out really well so far. This is interesting because for us, it seems like it would be better to have some shared space and maybe only 1 or 2 offices for those who need some time to work alone and do the rest of our work together. A few offices across campus have been experimenting with setups like that.

Small teams on focused projects are helped a lot by these kind of environments. In RedWest A, while working on a really cool project that didn't ship :(, we had "The Cave", where a bunch of devs were accomodated close together into a single big room, desks strewn gracefully along curved paths and low dividers so you could just stand up and see almost everyone else's head.

We used a wall with a projector for SCRUM, triage and Xbox timeouts, it worked really well (except for the lack of natural light, hence the nickname) but you need to have the right people to do it, it's not for everybody.

Re: It's official...

Erik Porter — Sat, 23 Feb 2008 06:44:45 GMT

PaoloM wrote:
It's usually only a temporary solution, or if two people need to work together for some reason.

Not true (at least on our end of campus). Microsoft has been buying and building more space and over the next year or two things will loosen up a bit, but there are still a lot of peope doubled up in offices because we're short on space. When I started at Microsoft I had my own office. Then Rory joined our team and I was low man on the totum pole and he became my roommate. Since he left I've had my own office again, but I've been told that the next person we hire for our team will end up as my roommate because there's not enough space. :(

What's interesting though, is that while I love having my own office (Rory was great, we got along well, but just having another body in the same room as you can be distracting sometimes) our team has started experimenting with renting out a conference room for 3 days out of the week and just hammering out a feature together. Since our team is small it's worked out really well so far. This is interesting because for us, it seems like it would be better to have some shared space and maybe only 1 or 2 offices for those who need some time to work alone and do the rest of our work together. A few offices across campus have been experimenting with setups like that.

Re: It's official...

evildictaitor — Sat, 23 Feb 2008 06:43:14 GMT

CompGuy101 wrote:
LaBomba, the vast majority of Google-rs have cubicals. I saw it in a "Tour of Google".

Not everyone in Google is cubicled, but most of 'em are. Nice cubicles tho.

Re: It's official...

blowdart — Sat, 23 Feb 2008 06:29:54 GMT

BTW dahat when can we give you bug reports? I found an amusing one this week :D

Re: It's official...

PaoloM — Sat, 23 Feb 2008 06:10:53 GMT

zian wrote:

LaBomba wrote: Your own office eh...wowwwwwwwzer!

How about Google, do they have cubicles or offices as well?

Don't some people have to share offices though? I think I saw some past C9 footage showing people working 2 to an office.

It's usually only a temporary solution, or if two people need to work together for some reason.

Re: It's official...

Zian Choy — Sat, 23 Feb 2008 01:57:16 GMT

LaBomba wrote:
Your own office eh...wowwwwwwwzer!

How about Google, do they have cubicles or offices as well?

Don't some people have to share offices though? I think I saw some past C9 footage showing people working 2 to an office.

Re: It's official...

LaBomba — Sat, 23 Feb 2008 01:01:21 GMT

Your own office eh...wowwwwwwwzer!

How about Google, do they have cubicles or offices as well?

Re: It's official...

blowdart — Fri, 22 Feb 2008 22:38:11 GMT

W3bbo wrote:

PaoloM wrote:
CompGuy101 wrote:Are you going to work in a cubical?

If so, take before and after shots so we can see your geek-office-goodness.

Cubicles are very rare around here. Pretty much everyone has an office.

And you can have it painted as you like

Since painting your own office isn't deductable as "working time" I guess you'd have to do it on a saturday

READ MOAR

Re: It's official...

W3bbo — Fri, 22 Feb 2008 22:34:19 GMT

PaoloM wrote:

CompGuy101 wrote:Are you going to work in a cubical?

If so, take before and after shots so we can see your geek-office-goodness.

Cubicles are very rare around here. Pretty much everyone has an office.

And you can have it painted as you like

Since painting your own office isn't deductable as "working time" I guess you'd have to do it on a saturday... by yourself, and put up with the smell of VOCs for the next few months on account of typical MS offices not having much ventilation.

Re: It's official...

blowdart — Fri, 22 Feb 2008 22:00:58 GMT

PaoloM wrote:

CompGuy101 wrote:Are you going to work in a cubical?

If so, take before and after shots so we can see your geek-office-goodness.

Cubicles are very rare around here. Pretty much everyone has an office.

And you can have it painted as you like

Black, with cure posters and a UV light?

Re: It's official...

Erik Porter — Fri, 22 Feb 2008 21:57:25 GMT

dahat wrote:

HumanCompiler wrote: Congrats and come say hi to the C9 team sometime. Great team you're joining.

What building are you folks in? I might just have to stop by in 2 weeks when I'm in town again looking for a place to live.

Building 18

Re: It's official...

PaoloM — Fri, 22 Feb 2008 21:57:15 GMT

CompGuy101 wrote:
Are you going to work in a cubical?

If so, take before and after shots so we can see your geek-office-goodness.

Cubicles are very rare around here. Pretty much everyone has an office.

And you can have it painted as you like :D

Re: It's official...

AndyC — Fri, 22 Feb 2008 16:15:25 GMT

Sounds cool, congratulations. WHS is a great product and I'm sure it'll get better with your input! :)

Re: It's official...

W3bbo — Fri, 22 Feb 2008 15:51:29 GMT

I guess this page needs updating then.

Not that anyone really uses the C9 wikis much. These aren't their glory days.

Re: It's official...

dahat — Fri, 22 Feb 2008 15:48:27 GMT

Thanks again all!

HumanCompiler wrote:
Congrats and come say hi to the C9 team sometime. Great team you're joining.

What building are you folks in? I might just have to stop by in 2 weeks when I'm in town again looking for a place to live.

staceyw wrote:

Lloyd_Humph wrote: Does this mean we can milk you for features?

"You can try... but I've got my own giant list I want to see done."

Hmm. That sounds like the old MS. The new MS listens to customer feature needs and balances that with good sense and avail resources. (or something like that) :-)

What can I say? I'm a fan of the old Microsoft... crushing any opposition and making only what they want!

I'm kidding of course :)

Dr Herbie wrote:
Obviously you'll be giving the coffeehouse the inside scoop on any new and exciting stuff you're working on ... at least as much as NDAs etc allow.

Of course!

I suspect though (although have no confirmation of this) that I may just be the one ending up in C9 videos talking about the SDK in future.

Bas wrote:
Oh hey, and prod them into getting that file corruption bug fixed as soon as possible.

They are already on that with and have been doing a great deal of dogfooding... in fact one of the folks I interviewed with is the person who owns the Drive Extender (which is what is responsible for the bug).

littleguru wrote:
I hope my background check isn't bringing anything to light that I don't even know about. haha!

It was just the 9 days of waiting and silence... wondering what horrible things they might be finding, what lies a former employer might be telling (in one case they just weren't returning calls) or what terrorist ties might be discovered due to a faulty database.

Re: It's official...

Christian Liensberger — Fri, 22 Feb 2008 09:38:51 GMT

Awesome. See you there! :)

I hope my background check isn't bringing anything to light that I don't even know about. haha!

Re: It's official...

Bas — Fri, 22 Feb 2008 09:25:44 GMT

Oh hey, and prod them into getting that file corruption bug fixed as soon as possible.

Re: It's official...

Herbie Smith — Fri, 22 Feb 2008 09:16:15 GMT

Congratulations. I hope you enjoy it.

Obviously you'll be giving the coffeehouse the inside scoop on any new and exciting stuff you're working on ... at least as much as NDAs etc allow.

Herbie

Re: It's official...

irascian — Fri, 22 Feb 2008 07:52:08 GMT

Congratulations! I'm very happy with WHS and looking forward to seeing how it progresses.

Re: It's official...

blowdart — Fri, 22 Feb 2008 06:42:40 GMT

dahat wrote:

Thanks all!

blowdart wrote:Will there actually BE an SDK, rather than a couple of DLLs to manually copy?

There will if I have anything to say about it.

Good man. I looked at it all. And shook my head and gave up. I already have one undocumented product to deal with in CardSpace; I really didn't want to fight another!

Congrats, and let me know when I can beta test :D

Re: It's official...

Red5 — Fri, 22 Feb 2008 03:56:52 GMT

Good News!
So long Midwest, hello West Coast.
What a great opportunity. I wish you the best.

Re: It's official...

William Stacey — Fri, 22 Feb 2008 02:58:58 GMT

Lloyd_Humph wrote: Does this mean we can milk you for features?

"You can try... but I've got my own giant list I want to see done."

Hmm. That sounds like the old MS. The new MS listens to customer feature needs and balances that with good sense and avail resources. (or something like that) :-)

That said, Congats!

Re: It's official...

Erik Porter — Fri, 22 Feb 2008 02:37:07 GMT

Congrats and come say hi to the C9 team sometime. :) Great team you're joining.

Re: It's official...

dahat — Fri, 22 Feb 2008 01:43:08 GMT

Thanks all!

blowdart wrote:
Will there actually BE an SDK, rather than a couple of DLLs to manually copy?

There will if I have anything to say about it.

Part of the phone interview went something like this:

Q: What would be one thing you'd like to change about Windows Home Server?

A: The whole add-in model that... <2-3 minute long explanation about how lacking it is and major issues involved>

Q: So you think you’d like to work with the extensibility model?

A: Yes... but even that is too limit, the entire extensibility lifecycle as it is today is horribly lacking because… <another 3-4 minute long explanation of what I think should be possible and how some things would work>

From that point on it was pretty clear where they wanted to put me... which is is great considering how angry I am with the 'SDK'.

Minh wrote:
Although, aren't they crazy progressive out there?

The term 'crazy liberal hippy commune' came to mind when I started looking around there, reading and listening.

There's just something about the impossibility of right turns in some places... dedicated U-turn lanes in others... and the number for reporting violators of the car-pool lane having the format of ###-HERO.

Minh wrote:
Hope some of that will rub off on you.

Given at least one of the other members of the team has similar views on liberty as I... it ain't bloody likely :D

Lloyd_Humph wrote:
Does this mean we can milk you for features?

You can try... but I've got my own giant list I want to see done.

PaoloM wrote:
What building, exactly?

43 (so long as they don't move again).

Re: It's official...

LaBomba — Fri, 22 Feb 2008 01:37:44 GMT

Congrats, no problem paying off the student loans now. :-)