Endings
A confluence of endings for me: Today marked the end of the Space Shuttle program, and tomorrow is my last day at Microsoft. So I’m going to write about both of these things, which means this will be long, so you can probably stop reading now.
In what I know will come as an enormous shock to people who didn’t know me back then, I was an enormous nerd as a kid. Gangly, uncoordinated, and cripplingly socially inept, I found refuge where many nerds do: In crappy sci-fi books and TV. And along with all of that, there was the Space Shuttle and the knowledge that not only was I going to get out of this metaphoric crappy town, I was going to get off the whole damn crappy planet. This brought me great solace.
Then Challenger blew up, and it felt like somebody stabbed me in the gut. All of a sudden that dream of getting out became distant and nigh impossible. I still remember it distinctly. That day some idealistic stupid part of me perished.
And time passed, and the space program resumed and became routine, and then we lost another one on its way home. (And now would be a good time to go watch John Roderick’s back while he sings about that). And now, as of today, the U.S. can no longer shoot a person into space. We are officially earthbound. I think this is a great tragedy, and I wonder what today’s crop of young nerds are thinking about instead of how much high school sucks.
I hope we as a country can collectively pull our head out of our ass and get back up there sometime soon.
So on top of that, tomorrow I’ll be turning in my cardkey and walking out of Microsoft for the last time. When I started I was fresh out of college and knew nothing about anything. I remember being so impressed by the free sodas and the smart people and the idea that we were changing the world in some significant way, and man, it was just awesome.
And the funny thing is, it stayed awesome for a really, really long time. Very little of that was because of the free sodas. My coworkers were almost uniformly smart, excited, and fun to work with, and I am pleased to number many of them among my personal friends (even if I only ever interact with them on Facebook). I owe these people an enormous debt, both personal and professional.
Along the way I got to work on a bunch of software that’s been used by millions of people. I shipped structured storage code that ran on Windows 3 and shipped with Windows 95, Windows NT, and is still in Windows today. I helped build two separate DRM products. I was there when NGSCB morphed into Bitlocker and actually managed to find its way into Windows. Most recently I got to ship code in Kinect, which sold 10 million units in the first four months. In all cases, my work was just a small part of a much larger whole, but it’s hard not to feel some sense of accomplishment at the number of lives I’ve touched with my work.
Microsoft has been a part of my identity for my entire adult life. I have actually had a longer relationship with my desk chair than I’ve had with my wife. I just tallied it up (in Excel, of course) - tomorrow it will be 7,340 days since the day I walked in. Seven thousand days. It’s hard to believe. When I started I was still a kid, now I have two kids of my own. And less hair.
Someone (I wish I could remember who) once told me “All change is experienced as loss”, and the last few days have really driven this home. As excited as I am about the new opportunities to come, I can’t help but be really sad and wistful about what I’m leaving behind. Tomorrow is going to be a tough day.
In what I know will come as an enormous shock to people who didn’t know me back then, I was an enormous nerd as a kid. Gangly, uncoordinated, and cripplingly socially inept, I found refuge where many nerds do: In crappy sci-fi books and TV. And along with all of that, there was the Space Shuttle and the knowledge that not only was I going to get out of this metaphoric crappy town, I was going to get off the whole damn crappy planet. This brought me great solace.
Then Challenger blew up, and it felt like somebody stabbed me in the gut. All of a sudden that dream of getting out became distant and nigh impossible. I still remember it distinctly. That day some idealistic stupid part of me perished.
And time passed, and the space program resumed and became routine, and then we lost another one on its way home. (And now would be a good time to go watch John Roderick’s back while he sings about that). And now, as of today, the U.S. can no longer shoot a person into space. We are officially earthbound. I think this is a great tragedy, and I wonder what today’s crop of young nerds are thinking about instead of how much high school sucks.
I hope we as a country can collectively pull our head out of our ass and get back up there sometime soon.
So on top of that, tomorrow I’ll be turning in my cardkey and walking out of Microsoft for the last time. When I started I was fresh out of college and knew nothing about anything. I remember being so impressed by the free sodas and the smart people and the idea that we were changing the world in some significant way, and man, it was just awesome.
And the funny thing is, it stayed awesome for a really, really long time. Very little of that was because of the free sodas. My coworkers were almost uniformly smart, excited, and fun to work with, and I am pleased to number many of them among my personal friends (even if I only ever interact with them on Facebook). I owe these people an enormous debt, both personal and professional.
Along the way I got to work on a bunch of software that’s been used by millions of people. I shipped structured storage code that ran on Windows 3 and shipped with Windows 95, Windows NT, and is still in Windows today. I helped build two separate DRM products. I was there when NGSCB morphed into Bitlocker and actually managed to find its way into Windows. Most recently I got to ship code in Kinect, which sold 10 million units in the first four months. In all cases, my work was just a small part of a much larger whole, but it’s hard not to feel some sense of accomplishment at the number of lives I’ve touched with my work.
Microsoft has been a part of my identity for my entire adult life. I have actually had a longer relationship with my desk chair than I’ve had with my wife. I just tallied it up (in Excel, of course) - tomorrow it will be 7,340 days since the day I walked in. Seven thousand days. It’s hard to believe. When I started I was still a kid, now I have two kids of my own. And less hair.
Someone (I wish I could remember who) once told me “All change is experienced as loss”, and the last few days have really driven this home. As excited as I am about the new opportunities to come, I can’t help but be really sad and wistful about what I’m leaving behind. Tomorrow is going to be a tough day.