Coffee chat with software engineer in One Drive and Sharepoint

Today, I had a coffee chat with a full-time software engineer in OneDrive and SharePoint. In preparation for the coffee chat, I checked the engineer’s profile through the internal Microsoft account portal and wrote some questions to guide our conversation. Spending some time preparing for the chat helped me to reflect on software engineering practices and Microsoft culture I wanted to learn about from the coffee chat. Also, I was interested in how project tasks evolve during a software engineer’s time at Microsoft because I noticed that the engineer was a Software Engineer level 2, which means that they have worked on various projects.

During our introduction phase of the chat, the engineer mentioned how she had attained three promotions in about three years, which was fast and surprising progress. From this I was curious to know what she attributed to this progress. I expected her to mention how she worked on very difficult projects that impressed her boss. But I was shocked when the full-time engineer attributed her fast career trajectory to being dependable and willingness to share knowledge. The engineer recalled organizing different events to teach members of the engineering team how to build data visualization tools. “I did not want to be the only one who knew about the data visualization tools,” she mentioned. One aspect of Microsoft that always impresses me is how people are willing to help and it was not surprising to hear that highlighted during the coffee chat today. This part of the conversation reassured me to reach out more to full-time employees to ask questions and to attend learning events organized within the team to learn various parts of One Drive and SharePoint products. It also informed me that success as a full-time software engineer is not measured by how much knowledge I individually know or working on complex projects but on being willing to share this knowledge with others.

Another major aspect she highlighted was “having a life outside work” which I broadly understood as work-life balance. The full-time software engineer mentioned how she usually works less than 40 hours a week but still gets all her projects done excellently. She attributed this to understanding and putting her energy into projects that have great impact. We discussed how there are many tasks that get assigned and how it is very possible to spend unexpectedly long time on less relevant or less impactful work. The engineer mentioned how evaluating and investing time in the most-impactful work has helped her keep motivated and productive when working. Additionally, I learned that attaining a healthy work-life integration allows creativity and innovation that often strained when a software engineer is stressed. The reminder to take time off work to do something interesting to me came in handy because I have spent the last two weeks working longer hours to make progress in setting up my environment and starting my project. Moving forward, I plan to attend keep my work hours planned out and ensuring work does not take over all the time planned for meeting new people, sleeping, or doing other fun activities.