Every once in a while I experience a perfect mind-storm of ideas, memories, thoughts and anticipations. I’m having one of those now, after the deliciously prepared (really!) stir fry yakisoba noodle lunch at the Lincoln Square Microsoft Cafeteria between meetings in a near dreamy contemplative state that generates a rarely experienced convection of simultaneously occurring and somehow metaphysically connected independent and otherwise unrelated thoughts.
It’s one of those times when I feel the urge to write it all down somewhere, not because I’m particularly convinced that anyone in the blogosphere is remotely interested, but simply because I feel the subtle urge to do so in-spite of my ever present assuredness that by the time I get it all down in luminous bitful scrawl, I’ll be dreadfully disappointed at how far afield my ruminations have strayed from the aforementioned enlightened epiphany.
Today’s particular bewilderment began as I stood atop the Lincoln Square Microsoft building patio, looking out on a beautiful sunny day with the Olympic Mountain range to the west and the Cascade Mountain range to the east, with Lake Washington, the floating bridges, Bellevue, Kirkland, Seattle and the entire valley and plateaus laid out in full splendor below.
Becky’s coming to visit in a couple of weeks, and we’re going to go explore some of that great wild area called the Washington state peninsula. Coming from Kansas, I’m expecting Becky to experience some sensory overload. There’s nothing like watching a landlubber, flatlander gawk agape at the splendorous green rain forest on the one hand while soaking in the breeze blowing in off the Pacific on the other. I thought about that as I peered out over the Olympics from my perch high about Bellevue.
The troubling times of the last few years for myself and family have rarely been pierced by the twinkling hopefulness that I feel now on the other side of the process and rarely have I seen things as clearly for what they are as I do now. There’s something liberating, expansive and soul enhancing to the elevated vision afforded by exiting a long and difficult process or riding an elevator to the top floor of a large building. There are more mountains to climb, bridges to cross, shores to reach and friends to make and keep.
I’m about to head off to India for the first time. In spite of my perpetual wanderlust and curiosity, India has never held a particular attractiveness for me. I’m not sure why. Having all the mystical and oriental attributes of some of my other bucket list destinations, it should logically be one of the big ones up there with Thailand, China, and Nepal. Maybe it’s because I always felt that being in the software industry, it was a fait accompli that I would one day visit there. Many on my Redmond team and some of my peers ask me if I’ve ever been to India. “No, this is my first time”. “Oh” they say. And then they get a big smile on their face as if remembering the first time they got lost in the busiest part of Hyderabad, got robbed and fell into a puddle of mud. Then they, inevitably, say something like. “Make sure you get a driver.” Or, what hotel are you staying in? “Well, I’m staying in the Ista hotel right by the Microsoft offices.” “Oh? I haven’t heard of that one.” They say. “Does it have air conditioning?” I say, “Sure, it’s a nice hotel.” “Oh, but does it work?” They say… I consider myself a pretty battle hardened traveler. I’m not too worried. But, I’ll report back on all the fun experiences as soon as possible.
Having worked at a number of large and small companies and been exposed to many, many more through personal consulting, customer visits and executive briefings, I feel pretty confident in saying that Microsoft is a very unique company. There’s a very strong culture here that pervades every interchange, every meeting, every powerpoint deck that multiply around here prolifically. In the 15 years I’ve worked here, part of my epiphany today is that I’ve been far more influenced in how I conduct my life by Microsoft than I had previously thought. It impacts interpersonal engagement, what I’m passionate about, even my values as an individual. If I was to do a binary compare between the personality of Kirk that landed here in January of 1996 and today, there’s probably a 25% overlap. It’s the most important part of me that identifies me as that same person, but oh how much has changed.
After a difficult, painful and protracted job search I’ve landed in a role that I feel is a perfect fit for me, my skillset, experience to this point and future aspirations. I’m amazed at the elements of serendipity that fell together unexpectedly and quite unorchestrated by me to land me where I’d hoped to one day find myself, working in a team building performance management and business intelligence solutions for performance optimization, measuring return on investment, and managing the soup to nuts process from budgeting to reporting for the entire Microsoft marketing organization. Looking at my past experience in UPS, direct marketing, online marketing systems, studying accounting and information systems, helping to build the venerable SQL Server business intelligence toolset and the master data services product it’s easy to see a great fit, and a bit surprising when you consider the fact that I thought I was interviewing for a different job.
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