So I’ve made it to Seattle (well Bellevue at least) to start my orientation with Microsoft. This afternoon 3 of us on the PFE team met up at the airport to carpool together. We ended up heading to a great place called the Crab Pot, and had the waitress dump a big ol’ pot of seafood type stuff on the table, which we promptly picked through. It was delicious, and great for a we’re-having-dinner-at-3pm-because-it’s-really-6pm-to-us meal. ;)
Over dinner, we were talking about how we were recruited, and our backgrounds. The other two seem to be more SQL heavy, and have been up here for various SQL conferences, Tech-Ed, etc, etc. I, on the other hand, use Linux as my primary home system, talk about Ruby at MSDN Code Camps, and blog about agile and other fun topics. I’m like this strange black sheep, and in fact, when the other two heard about Linux, et al, the first words were “blech!”.
Tomorrow starts new employee orientation, then on to the bootcamp. It will be interesting to see how things go with me in the culture. Kind of makes me wish I had talked to Ward Cunningham about his time in Microsoft. Although he was with P&P;, which is arguably more agile. ;)
Good luck Cory. Take heart, there are good people there, and not all of them fear/loathe linux.
BTW, you should there’s a nice restaurant on the east side called smaniaz (iirc) The chef/owner is into Northwest/German fusion. Really good food.
Thanks Pat! And thanks for the comment about Seattle.rb – I’m going to try to head out for the hacking night tomorrow night.
Oh, and I will take heart – it’s amusing to me – not discouraging. Actually, it’s a little fun too. I should download a LiveCD tonight and show up during bootcamp with Linux “running” on the laptop and ask them why I can’t log into the network…