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Diary 30th Aug: 2 factors greatly impact career

I tend to say, yes, it's still a diary, but seems have to postpone it...

During communication with bunches of candidates, 2 feelings are getting stronger & stronger, about IT career:

The number 1 issue is: how much attention do you pay to fundament & fundation.
According to my understanding, 4 aspects: the algorithm, data structure, OS and database.
A lot of people do not won't to treat these 4 aspects seriously, because found without good understandings of these 4, they still could do their jobs and even do good jobs. So why need to learn from A,B,C?
Yes, you are right, even in Microsoft, for e.g. as a test engineer, on developping test tools, it's not necessary to always put algorithm in consideration for everytime.

But I try to say is, let's look after 5 or longer years...
You are still young now, fresh graduated or less than 3,4 years' experience, but after 5 years', you getting married, you will "create human", be a husband, be a father, getting to lose control of weight, lose control of your free time, then I ask: Will you be available to come back and pick up <c++ primer> again? Will that be a suffer experience for you?

If you are fortunately enough, I'd rather to call that is a fortunate, to be a team leader even manager after 2 to 3 years work, I don't think that's a good thing for you...
Simple, to be in management role, means you have to spend more time on team, on people, your knowledge of algorithm doesn't grow itself.
It's proved our current computer science education system is a mess, that mean the knowledge you received from school maybe not sufficient, you need to spend 4, 5 years' at least to probe deeper during wor ...

tags: career life career advice

@ 20070831 04:41:00 with 2 comments read more...

Diary 28th Aug: Sit-in with SQL Test Team

Today's sit-in is with SQL test team, unfortunately my assigned mentor Leo could not come in this AM, while I'm glad that received a warm welcome from other members of that team, we talked about current work, tools & languages using, which was explained in details after Leo stepped in.

So, cut to the point:
the daily work of MDAC test team is not simply as test execution, stare at the screen, something like that, they are also doing:
building test infrastructure;
test new scenarios;

The latter 2 means a lot of coding, which is something different from Microsoft's test job and others.
Simply telling from the job title: SDET, Software Development Engineer of Test, we are actually doing test development.
It's never going to be a piece of cake job.
WTT, windows test technology (MDAC got very close relationship to windows) is a whole test infrastructure, which is very comprehensive & solid, yet still under continues improvement. For example, the MDAC team also developed the infrastructure of "Auto Lab Run System" to improve the automation test.
BTW, according to the MS development strategy of "component ownership", China R&D now owns the complete set of MDAC components, which includes : ADO, ODBC, OLE DB etc.

I list languages & tools & platforms we are using here:
Only apply to SQL Server R&D China MDAC test team:
Programming languages: C/C++.
Others: VB, C# plus.
Code review: Source Insight.
Debug: Windbg.

What is the good to be the SDET of Microsoft?
1. First of , as I also have mentioned in previous blog, Microsoft got the unparalleled test system and infrastructu ...

tags: SQL Server Team career opportunity

@ 20070829 02:55:00 with 2 comments read more...

Diary 27th Aug: Sit-in with SQL Dev Team

I don't know if I put the blog as "diary" then how long as I could stick it out...
Any way, today is an interesting day...

Per great support from management team, I got the "sit-in" opportunity with our SQL Shanghai R&D team members, 1 development engineer & 1 test engineer were assigned as my buddy, the next thing I need to do is to s+ their time, I blocked Monday with dev and tomorrow with test engineer, so here we go...

I woke up earlier today, (I mean than ususal) 6:40AM, arrived at around 8:30, and brought my bag directly to dev's cubic, call him "Su" here. He arranged a cubic for me, but I'd rather sitting together with him, so I could see even every lind of code he wrote on the screen, that's crazy :P

First of all, he introduced what we are doing for now: He's currently working in MDAC team, DP devision. MDAC is a technology which allows connect to SQL Server through ADO, ODBC, OLE DB etc. And this morning he just received an bug report from our vendor (we outsourcing our test to vendors' team), mentioned an error reported on connection procedure. So he's reproduce the procedure and locate the bug...and the following steps are out of my knowledge, so I have to keep the following as blank :D

Shame to say, it's the first time I learned Alt+Tab, seems they are more used with keyboard.

So, this is a debug day, and it's not a tipical day for the dev here, just happened have no chance to see their daily dev work. During the debug, people came and passed, his team mates came to discuss questions, at the begining, they would question: hey, su, you got a new partner? And I would love to kidding that: hey, I'm monitoring his work...
< ...

tags: SQL Server Team career opportunity

@ 20070828 05:57:00 with 1 comments read more...

Thrilling announcement: SQL Server of China R&D's blog is online now!

Bookmark the link of: http://blogs.msdn.com/prakas/

The first story, telling you the whole career experience of the head of SQL Server of China R&D team:

Quote:
"My name is Prakash Sundaresan (and I have a Chinese name as well - 孙博凯) and I lead the SQL Server R&D team in China. I just moved to China (for the 2nd time) a few weeks ago. As I begin to get to work here on building the team, ramping up our R&D efforts, working with customers and partners in the region etc., I find that there is a great deal of interest, from a variety of quarters, in what SQL Server R&D will be doing in China – hence this blog. Here, I plan to discuss not only the work we are doing in the SQL Server China R&D team, but also broader topics – the ongoing transformation of our field from Database to a modern comprehensive “Data Platform”; interesting applications customers and partners in this region are building using our technology; issues that may be of interest to students and others looking to build careers in this technology area; and anything else people want to discuss about working in China, global development etc."

Can not wait to read, check this out:
http://blogs.msdn.com/prakas/archive/2007/08/27/introduction.aspx

Together with my blog, we are going to show you a real work of Micrsoft SQL Server R&D China:

What we are doing?
What's on next plan?
What's the fun of working here?
Which position we are hiring?
and
How do we hire.....

It's a magic world, and it begins!

tags: SQL Server Blog

@ 20070828 02:50:00 with 0 comments read more...

How does Microsoft culture apply in interview?

我对于微软的文化在面试中的体现的一点理解：

微软的文化用6个方面来概括：
Integrity & Honesty Passion
Open&Respectful Accountable
Big Challenges Self-Critical

其中第一条就是讲诚信。以上六条，在招人的时候违反了任何一条，都会对组织的肌体健康产生不利影响，首当其冲的，认为就是第一条。
在面试当中，也会有很多地方可能会违反这一条：比如说，个人的经历，个人的待遇，个人的工作表现等等。
有个例子是，我们曾经面试过某公司的一名主管，在讲到个人工作业绩的时候，他说他是他们那儿的star performer, 碰巧我们后来也面试了他的上级，他的上级讲到了他花很多时间帮助一名工作表现比较差的员工，说的就是他。所以，象这样的员工，我们一定不会聘用他。
有很多时候，可能问到个人的具体问题，你也许记不清了，比如说具体的进入某公司的工作时间等，在这种情况下，宁可说需要给你一点时间，回去确定一下，也不要随便编一个。在对待个人简历、工作经历等的时候都要注意这一点。对这一点，微软采取的是零容忍的政策，有的时候即便我们找不到证据证明你是否撒了谎，可是面对在诚信方面有疑问的员工，我们会予以拒绝。

Open&Respectful
这是双方的，对微软来说，我们要求在对待候选人的时候，有礼貌和坦诚。对候选人提的问题认真倾听，在不涉及公司利益的情况下予以解答。在招聘的时候，对予聘用或者不聘用，不会有u ...

tags: interview tips career opportunity

@ 20070827 01:25:00 with 0 comments read more...

easy to be Adman

Default audience of this Ad is for those age in/above 30s.

1. Found yourself have not been doing "REAL CODING" for LONG time.

2. Found yourself losing control of weight.

3. Why not join Microsoft? You will find enough fun things to do, including customizing a washroom of your personal style.

Believe it's easy to be Adman, Pictures collected from web, what I did is put them together.
Idea & article by Freedo. Just for fun, I will charge $1000 for this.

tags: Microsoft life for fun

@ 20070825 07:18:00 with 2 comments read more...

Freedo & his space