Microsoft Corporation

Co-op Work Report

Name:Nick Bilogorskiy
School:SFU
Department:Computing Science
Work Term:3^rd
Semester:Spring 2002
Permission to view:Yes

Company Background

Hmm. What can I write about Microsoft that everyone doesn’t already know. That it is a worldwide leader in software for personal computers? Or that William Henry Gates, III, is richest person in America? Well, I think I’ll try to summarize the common knowledge facts with a bit of insider perspective.

Based in Redmond, WA software giant has just over 50,000 employees and still growing. New buildings are being built, court battles are fought and potential employees are lining up for interviews.With that in mind, budget is tight and interviews are more competitive than ever. Vast majority of Microsoft employees have their own office. Interns usually share one with a full-timer. Employees are defined into vendors/contractors and blue-badges (full-time). The latter have access everywhere in the company including the massive intranet labirinth. Interns get blue badges. Badge (security photo id) doubles as a transit pass a key to most doors and some computer systems and a debit card (for cafeterias). Pop is free (including milk, chocolate milk and juices). Lunches are relatively cheap and tasteless in cafeterias that almost each building has.

Accomodation is provided for relocating interns and new employees in one of them numerous appartment complexes surrounding the campus. Rental car, health club membership and a bunch of other benefits is provided at discounted rates.

Every employee has 2-4 computers in their office (one of them a laptop for PMs). Reason for such ‘multithreading’ is typically you’ll need different operating systems and builds installed simultaneously, have hardware to do local builds and/or automation runs, and always have access to the email. Email is the communication medium of choice, over phone or face-to-face. Instant messaging is rare except among friends at work.

Most people seem very qualified, yet overworked, stressed out and behind schedule. Aggressive goal setting is encouraged, and overtime is typically expected to be put in in order to achive those goals.
Performance is evaluated based on how much you overachieved the goals and exceed your manager’s expectations.

My Projects

I was an intern in Microsoft Office group, testing next generation of Word. My position was STE (software test engineer). Don’t be mislead by the “software” and “engineeer” words appearing in the title though, because it was all about “test”.

My first task was to get myself familiarized with the software, and how to test it according to Microsoft guidelines. I attended a number of internal training classes and read a lot of documentation on the product. After that, it was all testing: ad hoc, automation based, test plan based, and so on.

Word had thousands of bugs being opened each week and 20 to 30 of them were opened by me weekly. I also learned how to create testing matrices, test design specifications and other documents.

During the second part of my internship, I was mostly working on testing automation. My tasks were to increase coverage for my areas by creating as many scripts as possible. Scripts were written in TestWizard (internal Microsoft tool), and results were verified using Word object model in VBA.

One of the things I learned is that tester’s job is hardly about writing code. I had expectations of everything being automated and testers walking in test labs only to run scritps and setup machines. On the contrary, a surprising amount of testing I did was performed manually, installing the latest build in my own machine (I had 3), and trying to break it. A huge chunk of time was spent daily in group meetings, 1-on-1 meetings, email (30-50 new messages a day), writing reports, creating testing documents and negotiating bug fixing with developers. Coming from a developer background, this was a difficult adjustment for me, becase I wanted to write code!

I think I will avoid applying for testing positions in the future (even at Microsoft), because it just isn’t my thing. At times, I felt overloaded with tasks during my internship, but I was never challenged by the difficulty of them, nor asked to do anything really creative or interesting. Finding rare bugs wasn’t enough to motivate me to keep focused and concentrated, do the best job I can, and to enjoy it..

Overall Experience

I found Microsoft to be a very competitive and professional environment and people I met here are very dedicated to excellence in everything they do. Failure is rarely tolerated here, yet the working environment is warm and friendly.

I’m glad I have been given testing projects such as finding bugs in PTS, writing automation scripts and authoring TDS and other documents. These tasks gave me a good idea of what full-time testers do at Microsoft. In my work I got to improve upon the skills I consider my strengths, such as communication and technical skills, as well as learning to be more proactive, be a go-getter and take initiative.

Overall, I’m very happy with my internship experience. I think I learned a lot and also got a feel for what working at Microsoft is all about.

My objectives for this work term were :

· Learn new testing strategies

· Find out how Microsoft testers differ from all other testers

· Meet new people and setup contacts for future employment.

· Make some cash to pay for my future semesters of school

All objectives were fully achieved.

I would definitely recommend an internship at Microsoft to anyone, because whether I liked it or not it no doubt was a beneficial experience and taught me a lot about the company, industry, and myrself.