I'm leaving....
I've not really kept this one much of a secret. Anyone who talks to me regularly will know this already - but I guess I better announce it officially. I'm leaving Microsoft Australia like so many others from Australia to join Microsoft Corporation in Redmond USA.
I will be starting there (hopefully with visa pending) sometime in July as Program Manager in the Windows Server Group Policy team. I say hopefully as this all depends on the US Dept of Immigration...:) The common question though is what does a Program Manager do? The primary goal of the role essentially is to take in feedback from a variety of channels about the current products, turn those into validated scenarios that the majority of people would want, turn those into designs and requirements and then project manage them with a great dev and test team into an outcome. That's very roughly it I think :)
Its been something that has been a dream of mine for a long time now that I have wanted to be a part of the product team actually being involved in building software rather than just showing off all the great work our teams do.
But just because I'm joining a product team now doesn't mean I wont be blogging or using this blog to gather your feedback on some of the potential scenarios I will be working on. I need your help and your feedback to tell me where we can improve and exactly what you want done to make the next versions of our products even better.
So its hello to the USA - where federal income tax is at least 12% less than the tax rate of Australia (for me anyway...), interest rates are half the rate of Australia, petrol is half the rate of Australia, cars are half the price of Australia...so there's much goodness to be had (For those not in Australia: Australia is very expensive to live and to try and actually keep some of the money you work hard for)
At the same time its goodbye to Perth and our friends and family (thank goodness I can escape the heat now!) and goodbye to Microsoft Australia and all the people who have attended events that I've been involved in. Thankyou! I've certainly enjoyed being able to present to all of you and hopefully every now and then you might have learnt something in one of my sessions - I hope to see you all again when I eventually come back to Australia some time in the future - or at least some event they let me come and present at!
