and Words
We′ve been seeing what you wanted, got us cornered right now
Fallen asleep from our vanity, might cost us our lives
I hear they’re getting closer
Their howls are sending chills down my spine
And time is running out now
They′re coming down the hills from behind
When we start killing
It’s all coming down right now
From the nightmare we’ve created
I want to be awakened somehow (I want to be awakened right now)
When we start killing, it all will be falling down
From the hell that we′re in
All we are is fading away
When we start killing
Lyric excerpts from Musixmatch.
I joined Microsoft in 1991. I started in the Multimedia team. At the time, computers with sound cards and optical drives were fancy. However, they were standard equipment on our computers, along with the ‘large’ 200MB hard drives. Other teams envied our team for the sheer coolness of our work. I arrived at the tail end of Windows 3.0 with Multimedia Extensions. I started as an STE (Software Test Engineer); I manually verified that the product worked as expected. This team brought audio to Windows; it started with Windows 3.1.
Over the years, my role in the audio team changed. I transitioned to an SDET (Software Development Engineer in Test) to Development and back to SDET. I contributed to every version of Windows, from 3.1 to 7, as an audio engineer. Even today, I understand many parts of that code. I spent way too many hours debugging intricate idiosyncrasies about that source code. To this day, I still tell people, “If you’re listening to any audio on Windows, you’re running code that I wrote.”
Shortly after observing my 18th anniversary at Microsoft, I left my role as an SDET in the audio team. Some teammates left to form a new team on Windows 8 to tackle new challenges. It felt new and exciting. Since audio was all I knew, I was petrified.
My new team was called Runtime Experience. We often went by the moniker Rex; our mascot was either a dog (at the time, the first image from Bing search) or a Tyrannosaurus Rex dinosaur. I have the T-Rex Lego set to prove it. The Rex team itself was composed of members of about three teams. Hence, a handful of familiar faces surrounded me, and thus, familiar relationships.
At the time, Microsoft allowed the most senior employees (not the highest ranking) first pick of offices. My former audio team resided in Building 85; this office was among my favorites. It sat halfway lengthwise along the side of the building on the second floor. The windows spanned from the floor nearly to the top of the ceiling. Furthermore, it overlooked a small courtyard where I occasionally saw people playing catch with a baseball and mitts or tossing a frisbee. If you worked into the evening, you could observe the sunset on clear days. Those skies swirled in amazing blue, violet, pink, and orange hues.
However, the walls were paper-thin. I could easily overhear conversations in adjoining offices. In fact, in meaningful conversations, like reviews, I’d play music in my office just loudly enough so that they knew I could not hear them. Having my own office meant I could play music out loud without immediately disturbing others, save for the paper-thin walls. I kept my office set up for music pretty retro, it was a large amp that sat beneath my desk and a CD changer on my desk.
The move to the new team also meant a move in office buildings, from 85 to 86. This may seem like a trivial numerical change, but it wasn’t. While the two buildings sat geographically next to each other, they were very different. Building 86 housed the local cafeteria, but it lacked windows altogether. This building was affectionately known as “The Bunker” for its almost complete obscurity from natural light. The dining room adjoining the cafeteria had windows, but the office space did not. An occasional exit along the perimeter of this dining room served as a fire exit, and we may occasionally hear the alarm as people opened them by mistake. Yes, people occasionally clapped when that occurred.
Having eighteen years of seniority meant that I got among the best offices. I could peer out my door onto a two-story window about 20 feet away. There was a fair amount of foliage in that view, so even less sunlight than the size of that window might suggest. I don’t want to appear ungrateful; my office sucked less than the ones of my teammates. This office with four walls and an opening to that cave would be my home for the following years.
I discovered the Dutch metal band, Within Temptation around this time. Their music, especially this song, ‘The Howling’ resembled a battle cry which inspired me on those days with sparse sunlight and an abundance of unfamiliar components. It felt raw violence and desperation, which is precisely what I needed. I remember playing their music through the Zune app on my computer and their player with my headphones. I’d even zip tunes occasionally to friends through their sharing feature.
I struggle to explain our charter to even those who program, so I won’t try. That said, I found the work deeply interesting. This new team and work presented fresh challenges with a different collection of programmers. I retrofitted older components with unfamiliar architectures with modern reporting while other programmers continued their work. Suddenly, automated tests that had never communicated with our reporting systems, lit up. This collectively saved us considerable work, eliminating the need to redo everything from scratch.
Having completed this work expediently, I gained credibility among my peers. Unbeknownst to me, they started to see me as a leader. I can’t claim full credit for it; my lead (and friend) had intentionally led me through his maze. Teammates called upon me to brainstorm through exceptionally difficult problems. I teamed up with partner teams to design solutions.
This new team and my time in ‘The Bunker’ transformed my approach to work. It felt both exhilarating and terrifying. I transitioned from merely another programmer with a work assignment to one with a long-term investment in the success of the team. Good solutions solve problems; great solutions have vision. To channel the great Wayne Gretzky, I figuratively went to where the puck was going to be.