Twenty-Four Seven June 29, 2006, 8:51AM EST

The Message from Microsoft

Internships are the key to getting a good IT position, says this U Washington grad who's managing a messaging team at Microsoft

I'm a program manager for the messaging team in the new Microsoft (MSFT) managed solutions group. Working on a new effort at Microsoft is both exciting and complicated. It is like directing a large symphony orchestra where musicians are rapidly making instruments as they play, the music is partially written, and the audience is attentive and small—but tickets are still being sold.

My team has deployed and actively manages e-mail services for a large customer. We provide valuable input to our product groups to reduce the operating costs of managing enterprise PC's and e-mail and collaboration services. My group and my company are passionate about improving our products and the experience for our customers and partners (see BusinessWeek.com, 5/4/06, "Hello, Mickey").

	Ann Vu Program Manager Microsoft Corp. BA Class of 2004, University of Washington Business School

I work at Microsoft's corporate campus in Redmond, Wash. There are approximately 100 employees in my group, although there are more than 60,000 employees working for Microsoft worldwide. I work with engineers, operation analysts, service managers, architects, and other program managers to deliver projects.

I jumped right into the fire after I graduated from the University of Washington Business School with an information systems concentration. I had previously had a valuable six-month internship for the IT messaging and collaboration group at Microsoft. I crave career challenges, so when I was offered the opportunity to join MMS, I happily took the chance (see BusinessWeek.com, 5/08/06, "No Passport to Success").

If you peek into my life, a day would look like this:

8:05 a.m.—I am stuck in traffic listening to NPR on the 520 floating bridge on my way from Seattle to Redmond. This is typical, but at least the view is beautiful. I spot a blue heron, some ducks, and sunbathing turtles as I check my schedule and e-mail from my Windows Mobile Smartphone.

8:25 a.m.—I dock my laptop and begin triaging my e-mail in terms of priority while I crank up Alice in Chains on my Windows Media Player.

9:00 a.m.—Bill Long, an operations analyst in my group, IM's me to ask if I'd like to make a coffee run. I desperately need a double tall soy hazelnut latte before I start to "fatfinger" everything I type (when your fingers feel like they're two sizes too big, and you add random letters to every word you type).

10:07 a.m.—I pop my head in our engineers' offices to see if they are tracking to meet their deliverables. We go over their priorities for the remainder of the week, which include delivering an engineering specification for a new feature and determining the approach to fix a problem encountered with a dependent technology.

10:28 a.m.—An Outlook reminder pops up again telling me to update a status report on my projects. I communicate project status and continue to reply to e-mails.

11:01 a.m.—I go to my manager Tom's office to review and edit PowerPoint slides about our service offering and customer deployment strategy.

12:10 p.m—Some team members roam the halls seeking lunch buddies, and we dash to a joint next door for some teriyaki.

1:00 p.m.—There's more rapid-fire e-mailing and following up on deliverables. I develop a succinct agenda for my 2:00 meeting and send it out to attendees.

2:00 p.m.—My engineers and I briefly discuss fond memories of action hero Optimus Prime of the Autobots before diving into my agenda on features we are releasing as part of our next product version.

3:30 p.m.—I review the hardware procurement and build-out process with an infrastructure engineer. I want to make sure we have the right server options on file and we understand our dependencies and timeframes for our deployments.

4:45 p.m.—I sync up with the program manager of a dependent technology to go over his schedule, lab readiness, and the tasks my engineers own.

6:23 p.m.—Time flies! I check the traffic on the Transportation Dept. Web site to determine the optimal way back to Seattle and meet a couple of friends at a pub for cajunized tater tots, mac and cheese, and good beer.

10:47 p.m.—As I lie in bed, I use my Smartphone to sync my e-mail and calendar. I check my schedule for the next day to make sure I have no early morning conference calls and see if I have any high-priority e-mails. However, I never want work to be the last thing on my brain before I fall asleep, so I snuggle up to a novel before drifting off.

Good IT positions after graduation are difficult to come by, but there is no secret to understanding the key to obtaining one—internships. They are extended interviews where you can prove yourself and understand the working environment that is the best fit (see BusinessWeek.com, 5/30/06, "Big Blue on Campus").

Ann can be contacted at: indyann@u.washington.edu