The day finally came; after what feels like an eternity, I’m once again gainfully employed by a good company. In fact, after a four year absence, I’m back to being on the payroll for the first company I worked for out of college: Microsoft.
Yes, that’s right — the Microsoft. The one you’re thinking that is in Redmond/Seattle Washington. The one that makes Windows, Office, Xbox, and some pretty sweet Surface laptops.
But then you’re thinking “Why the heck is Richie in China if he’s working for Microsoft?” and what a great question that is! As it turns out, hiring really great software engineers is extremely difficult in the USA, especially when a lot of younger, fresh out of college students prefer to work at companies like Uber, Facebook, SnapChat (yeah, I don’t understand that app either), or Google. The old 1990s type companies similar to Microsoft, Oracle, and Cisco are fighting to get that new talent but it’s an uphill battle. Once you pass that hiring hurdle, you are faced with the issue there is a severe lack of graduates with STEM degrees (science, technology, engineering, math). And don’t get me started with the stupidness that is the visa process for hiring skilled overseas workers to legally enter the United States. It all adds up to non-winning combination.
It turns out that in China Microsoft is one of the highly sought after companies for software engineers. With government friendly policies and offices in Beijing, Shanghai, Shenzen, and Suzhou, Microsoft is getting those great engineers and the product development follows suit. This allows Microsoft to develop an increasing number of products solely in China, including the one I’m working on.
So what is that product? It’s a team collaboration product called SharePoint. It can easily act as a company’s internal website (or intranet, to use the technical term, not to be confused with internet) or a location where information, documents, and business logic/process can live and execute. It is employed by many Fotune 500 and Fortune 1000 companies as it fills a big need for organizations of many sizes. What’s also pretty freaking cool is that Microsoft’s intranet is powered by SharePoint! That means everyone in my company will be using the product I’m helping to develop! Pretty cool, huh?
My exact set of features that I’ll be helping to produce is still a bit in the air, but I’m sure it’ll be fun to work on as all my colleagues, Chinese & expat alike, are extremely nice and dedicated to making this product even better than it currently is.
Stay tuned!
Oh, before I forget, the blog might not be updated daily as now my M-F (or S-Th for those in the USA, due to the time zone difference) likely won’t be very interesting. But then again, I’m not quite sure how interesting this blog is to begin with!