From Rookie to Rookie of the Year...

...And there are times when you just feel lucky about the way you are. After being awarded "Rookie of the Year" by my team at ACE conference, I just feel how lucky I am being at Microsoft and what a journey it has been. To be frank, at my home, it's just another award among my dozens of others. But what makes it special is the fact that it's my first as a "Professional". It all started in early 2007, when one of my best friends, Kiran, asked his Uncle to refer me at Microsoft. Things worked and I wrote a written test for internship, went through couple of interviews and subsequently got selected for five months internship. Being an electronics student (I still like to keep my identity as electronics guy), it was a challenging task before me to cope up with the best minds in software industry. I joined MMS (Microsoft Managed Services) team as an Intern. My five months internship included tasks like understanding Data Protection Manager 2007 and developing tools in PowerShell for the same. Fortunately, the task was easy than anticipated. I developed around 13 tools within 3 months and tools turned out to be pretty helpful to the team.

But life is not as easy as it sounded. Almost at the end of my internship, I got to know that there are no open positions in the team. Just when I was thinking, lets return to my beloved electronics... I got a call from HR that my internship is extended for two months and I am supposed to join a new team called "ACE". Wow... that was a shocker! Lucky again. This time around, my job revolved around Performance testing of IT applications. The work demand was simple and quite. I did manage to learn and do End-to-End performance testing of ASP.NET applications and it worked. I was offered full-time employment at Microsoft's ACE team. The pay was handsome, I liked the people around me and moreover, I was in love with Microsoft's work culture. Which company would allow me to come to office at anytime I feel like?

Being a full-time employee at Microsoft brings in lot of responsibilities. The responsibility that you are now a member of a company that revolutionized the way people look at computers. Responsibility that you are now treated as creator of windows in your neighborhood and relatives and you are supposed to solve each and every windows related problem. With the Vista's arrival, my mobile was on continuous stress with every other friend, relative and neighbor calling me up. There I was, with XP installed on my PC, trying to answer, questions on Vista. They say, when you are brave, flukes work!

Performance of Web applications is a large field and I have to admit performance testing is just the tip of iceberg. Every project that I have taken up helped me understand new things, made me better and confident in what I am saying. One thing that I never hesitated to project myself as.... " I am Rookie ". I am not an expert in this field, I am learning each and every bit of it and hopefully some day I might consider calling myself as expert. Till then, I am just a student who doesn't hesitate to ask questions, no matter how stupid they might sound. Time and again, I have been reminded by few people close to me that I should restrain from being over-simplified and project a different image before people and team. That's how people project themselves in Professional world. I know, in professional world, a big fish eats a small fish, that's the logic that is supposed to work best. But somewhere, my conscious says, I should act truthful not just to the people around me but to myself. I think that's what defines "Open and Honest" policy of Microsoft. Someone told me that when you accept what you are and willing to work hard towards excelling yourself, you are following all six policies of Microsoft. You are being Open and Honest, you are taking up the big challenge in venturing yourself into new fields, you are being self-critical by accepting what you are, you are being respectful to the people who are better than or just like you, you are showing the commitment of learning new things and you are passionate to excel and make it large. Mind you, only a passionate person has guts to accept what he is. Ask a non-passionate person about himself, he won't reveal his true identity.

Having said all that, I know I write well! My ex-manager says "it's all about managing expectations", with all due respect to him, my philosophy is "it's all about delivering beyond expectations". I look back at life, I have not just saved memories for myself, I have given memories to others and I hope I continue to do so. I stand today with a promise that "journey has just began and big things are yet to come".

Keep an eye, Abu is here to make a name.

September 21 6:53 AM 2008