{"id":387,"date":"2011-12-08T09:42:19","date_gmt":"2011-12-08T17:42:19","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/angryweasel.com\/blog\/?p=387"},"modified":"2011-12-08T09:42:19","modified_gmt":"2011-12-08T17:42:19","slug":"changes-three-ps-and-more-changes","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/angryweasel.com\/blog\/changes-three-ps-and-more-changes\/","title":{"rendered":"Changes, Three Ps, and More Changes"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>A little over five weeks ago, I got a new job (one of the things I find great about MS is that one can change jobs completely without going through the hassle of filling out new forms). In that five weeks, I was in Germany for four days, and off for two days for Thanksgiving, so technically today is my (\u2026counting on calendar\u2026) 23rd day on the Xbox team.<\/p>\n<p>Admittedly, I\u2019m still in the honey-moon phase, but I\u2019m having a great time. But life just doesn\u2019t seem to be as fun without a surprise here and there, and this career move wasn\u2019t without exception. More on that later \u2013 but let\u2019s first consider a bit of career advice.<\/p>\n<p>One tidbit of career advice I often give is \u201cThe 3 Ps\u201d. When you\u2019re looking for a job (or evaluating your current position), you need to consider the <strong>Product<\/strong>, the <strong>People<\/strong>, and the <strong>Person<\/strong>.<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><strong>Consider the Product<\/strong> \u2013 You\u2019ll be more motivated and excited about your work if you have interest in the product (or the technical challenges regarding that product). On the corporate applications side of Microsoft, I honestly think that <a href=\"http:\/\/microsoft.com\/lync\">Lync<\/a> (my old group) is freakin\u2019 cool, but there\u2019s no understating the sexy coolness of Xbox and Kinect either. <\/li>\n<li><strong>Consider the People<\/strong> \u2013 Nobody wants to work with a bunch of jerks. I don\u2019t want to work with people who don\u2019t care about their jobs. I happened to know dozens of people working on XBox (I worked with many of them on Windows 95 &amp; Windows 98), and all are great people. When I was considering the move, I chatted with people on the team that I didn\u2019t know \u2013 and they all had this <em>vibe<\/em> of loving what they do. To me, that\u2019s the sign of a good team to work on.<\/li>\n<li><strong>Consider the Person<\/strong> \u2013 We all have to work for <em>someone<\/em>. Take time when considering a new position to make sure that whoever you report to (and ideally, <em>their<\/em> manager) are on the same page as you; and will support you and help you grow. <\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>To me \u2013 the <em>Person<\/em> part of the equation is critical. I\u2019m in a rare position at Microsoft \u2013 we don\u2019t have many testers at my level who do not manage teams. Managing someone like me, and communicating my value (or lack of value) appropriately is a challenge. Because there are few of us extra-senior testers, there are <u>very <\/u>few managers who have experience using us effectively. I selected my last manager based on this criteria, and when I moved to Xbox, I used the same criteria. It was hard to leave a team where I had the 3 Ps, but the time was right, and I took the time to ensure that I would have the 3 Ps on my new team as well.<\/p>\n<p>Three days into my new job, my manager called me into his office and said, \u201cWelcome to the team \u2013 we\u2019re having a re-org\u201d. The details of the re-org aren\u2019t important, but they make perfect business sense, and I\u2019m excited about the change. Unfortunately, the manager I had carefully selected wasn\u2019t going to be my manager any more \u2013 and with the upcoming release of the <a href=\"http:\/\/majornelson.com\/2011\/12\/05\/a-letter-from-marc-whitten-a-new-xbox-360-experience\/\">new dashboard<\/a>, I wasn\u2019t sure where I was going to land until a day or two ago.<\/p>\n<p>So \u2013 with one manager on the way out, and another yet to be defined, I fell back on what I seem to do best \u2013 I did whatever I wanted. In the land of Xbox, I suppose that could mean a whole lot of Skyrim and Forza, but I dug deep into some testing challenges, looked at engineering systems, got to know people and basically spent a whole bunch of time figuring out how the org and technology work. I once considered a position at a company full of young folks where someone suggested that I spend at least a month or two \u201cdoing whatever I wanted\u201d until I figured out what I <em>really<\/em> wanted to do. My recent experience wasn\u2019t quite as directed as that, but I find it interesting that concept seems to repeat throughout my career.<\/p>\n<p>The good news is that I\u2019ve met with my new boss a few times, and I think we\u2019ll work very well together. We\u2019re still figuring out exactly what I\u2019ll do (which is perfectly ok), but I\u2019m completely comfortable with how he wants to use me, and although he\u2019s still a bit of an unknown to me, I\u2019m pretty confident my 3 Ps are still in place. I\u2019m excited, and a little scared (another bit of good career advice), so I know I\u2019m in the right place.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>A little over five weeks ago, I got a new job (one of the things I find great about MS is that one can change jobs completely without going through the hassle of filling out new forms). In that five weeks, I was in Germany for four days, and off for two days for Thanksgiving,&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_kad_post_transparent":"","_kad_post_title":"","_kad_post_layout":"","_kad_post_sidebar_id":"","_kad_post_content_style":"","_kad_post_vertical_padding":"","_kad_post_feature":"","_kad_post_feature_position":"","_kad_post_header":false,"_kad_post_footer":false,"_kad_post_classname":"","_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-387","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-allposts"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/angryweasel.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/387","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/angryweasel.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/angryweasel.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/angryweasel.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/angryweasel.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=387"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/angryweasel.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/387\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/angryweasel.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=387"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/angryweasel.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=387"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/angryweasel.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=387"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}