Journal Flamesplash's Journal: Anecdotes from Microsoft 1
I've been meaning to write these down for a while, and well I'm finally doing it. I'll be adding as I remember.
For those that don't know I worked at Microsoft for two summers and collected a handful of stories.
------
Visiting Bill
(you can skip to the ***** section for the "punch line" if you wish, I tend to be verbose. )
At Microsoft all the employees have these "smart" badges and all the doors that lead from the lobbies of buildings into the building have these little black panels. To get in you just put your badge up to the panel and bingo, the door opens, as well as making a log entry somewhere I'm sure. During my first internship my badge had allowed me to go anywhere I had ever tried on campus. The campus has about 40 buildings, almost all of which I had to real reason for being in, but I could still get in.
So, one night I'm working late and I decide I should stop and walk around campus a little. There is a big fountain nestled among some buildings and I decide that's a good enough place. One of these buildings the fountain is amongst also happens to be Bill's building.
So, I'm over near his building and the thought crosses my mind, "If they didn't want me in his building they wouldn't let my badge open the door to the building." Makes sense to me so I head over to the front entrance to his building
I enter the loby and already if feels odd, mainly because I've only been there once before and all the lights are out, but I go up to the locked doors, show my badge to the card reader plate and then clunk - the doors unlock.
About a second after I walked through the glass doors the thought "Now what" crossed my mind. It's easy enough to say "Hey lets go see Bill's office" when you outside witha couple locked doors between you, but now all that was gone. I finally decide to continue on my plan to find Bill's office and get as close a look as I can without doing anything blatantly wrong.
The problem is, while Bill's office is listed in the internal phonebook/directory, his office number is not found on the map. So, I follow the office numbers to where it looks like his office should be and bam it just ends up going into another set of office numbers. Hmmm, so I keep walking in circles till I finally notice this on odd hallway.
As a small aside, it's not "Bill's Building", it's just the building his office is in. The building is one of a set of identical buildings, with the exception being that in this building they just slapped an extra hallway in it, which I had just found. This means that the hallway is also narrow, 1 person at a time, and subsiquently hard to find.
So there I am at one side of the hallway Bill's office is on. It's narrow, it's dark and there is a big room to my right, behind a long glass wall. I walk up to the glass wall and peak it, it's a reception area. Yay, I found a dark reception area. It's fairly typical if not large, there are a couple couches, a decently sized TV, a nice receptionist deck, and an opening in the back wall! Now it's even darker back there, but as far as I could make out there were two short hallways off of this opening, both angling about 45 degrees from the reception area wall. And that's it. No little gun turrets came out of the ceiling and locked little red dots on my forehead, no speakers telling me to freeze. So I left.
******
The next day having been a little disappointed and more foolhardy, I decided to return to the hallway during business hours, see what the place is like in production mode. Again, I figure if no one or thing prevents me then there shouldn't be a problem.
I find the hallway rather easily this time, and proceed to walk down it. The recption area is lite this time, the TV is on but no one is in it. I turn my head back to the direction I'm walking and it is at this point I realize there is another room to my left that borders the hallway with a large glass wall. I also realize that there are a lot of people in it sitting along a long table running parallel to the hallway and they are all staring at me, no wait not me, but the guy who's back is to the glass wall that I'm getting ready to walk along, oh wait, that's Bill!
Luckily, this is all occuring in my periphrial vision and my survival instincts decided to kick and and keep me walking instead of just standing there like a fool, otherwise they would have all been watching me and Bill would be wondering what is wrong with everyone. I make it past the main glass wall which is followed by a non glass column, a glass door to the room, and then a nice wall that hides me. Once I'm hidden from view by the solid wall I take a quick peek back through the glass door and Bam, all I see is the profile of Bill Gate's head.
I had just walked about 2 feet behind Bill, with probably the top 15 executives of Microsoft watching me.
-----
Photographing Bill
It was just over a week before my first intenship ended, and I decided that I should take some pictures of the campus to remember it by if I didn't end up coming back the following summer. Microsoft has a very beautiful campus which is just one part of why it is fun and enjoyable to work there. Wired had a great two page spread arial view of the campus in their Nov 2000 issue, which had a very very long article on the DoJ/MS anti-trust trial. I actually have this image on the wall behind me at work.
So, back on track. After taking pictures of the usual things on campus, I decide that I should get as close a picture of Bill's office as I can. My ID badge had got me into every building I had tried so far, so I figured if it would let me into his building then it was ok to be there.
I had actually been by his office before and no one seemed to care.
When I get to his office area, I see that the reception area is closed and that I can't actually see his office door from the hallway, so I do the best I can and take a picture of the reception room, who's wall on the hallway is entirely made of glass.
Picture taken I start walking down the hallway to leave, as I near the end of the hallway I hear footsteps jogging down the cross-hallway towards me. Uh-oh. I stop and wait for the person to come buy. This dude wearing basically a business suit without the jacket comes into view and stands in front of me. He asks to see my badge, and takes down my office address and phone number. Then he asks why I was there and if I had taken any pictures. I tell him that I was there to take a picture and that I had taken one. He tells me that I need to give him the film as I'm not supposed to be there. So I rewind an almost full roll and hand it over. I also ask him about the other pictures, if I'll be able to get them back. He said that I should be able to, and to call security in a couple days, then leaves.
Well that was fun. I'm a little worried that I'm going to receive a "Thank you, don't worry about coming in tomorrow" note the next day at work, but if I recall correctionly all I got was a small mail with a summary of what happened from security. I wrote them back about the other pictures and they said that they would try to get them to me before I leave. The week goes buy and I head back home. A couple weeks later I write them again and they claim the security gaurd doesn't work there and they have no record of the event or the film. yay. While being a bit upset about the film, it was definetly a unique experience
(Need to polish this up)
------
The lady who was in charge of recruiting my first summer told me this story:
It was her first week and one morning while parking her car she accidently hit the car next to her, this rather nice lexus. While already dreading her day she wrote down the cars license plate, went to her office and contacted security about the car. It turned out to be Bill Gate's. At this point she's ready to pack her office and just leave to find another job. She wrote Bill an email apologizing profusely, giving him all her insurance information, and apologizing again. She received an email later that day from Bill that said "Don't worry about it, same thing happened to me last week, I'll take care of it."
Keep 'em coming! (Score:2)