Welcome Steve
Steve just completed his first week at Microsoft. Congrats! You are absolutely right, when you first arrive on the doorstep it is quite overwhelming. I have been working at MS now for approximately 4 years (2 in the Dallas Field Office and 2 in Redmond) and I still feel I don't know all the going-ons at MS. I hope I can give you advice to make it easier for you or anyone else taking the red pill:
- Meet everyone and write it down. You are going to be introduced to a lot of people in the beginning and if you are like me, you are not going to remember everyone's name and what they do. Get it down on paper (or on your Tablet) so that if you are in a meeting and they say "Hey, we should talk to the evangelism team about this." more than likely you will already know someone or at least have a contact point.
- Respect the e-mail beast. E-mail kills. There is a Kittie video where a man finds all these gold coins in this lake and keeps grabbing them and putting them in his pocket until he begins to sink and drown. E-mail at MS can be that way. Don't sign up for every mail list that you find because you will find after your 6-month honeymoon, that those lists will just fill up a folder and when you have 4,527 unread e-mails you will end up deleting them anyway. So just keep the lists manageable and every 6 months go through them and throw out the ones you don't use or you were somehow added to but you don't want to be on them. Also, filter but don't overfilter. Filters are great, but if you filter too much you start having e-mails slip into the filter system and someone wonders why you are not responding to theirs. People do it all different ways, but the way I prefer is to filter anything that I know is not crucial for me to read. So newsletters, other groups status reports, aliases get filtered but anything else goes through the Inbox (and then if I need to filter it out I can).
- Significant Others and the Microsoft Lifestyle. We have an MS101 for new folks and I don't know if they talk about this or not, but you need to make sure that you understand you will now begin taking on the Microsoft Lifestyle. You will think about work non-stop, you will find yourself working at crazy times and it can be consuming. You need to make absolutely sure your S.O. understands this, but you need to make sure you make time for them (and I don't mean that you Instant Message them when you are in the bedroom and they are in the living room or telling them about some new feature in the .NET Framework). It becomes real easy to leave the office and think about something on the drive home, walk in the door and say hello and go right to the computer. Make absolutely sure that you give them time in which your attention is focused on them. This becomes critical especially if you have children.
- Remember it is only software. This is an appendix to the previous bullet point. Have a life. Don't get wrapped up in the chaos and ambiguity you will sometimes face. Accept it and try to manage it the best you can. Also, I remember an executive who came to my MS101 and told everyone that you should find the three passions in your life outside of MS and make sure you give them time as well. It will focus the free time (what little free time you have) to make sure you are well-balanced.
Congratulations again Steve. I believe you are working at one of the most interesting places someone could be at and you are going to have a lot of fun and excitement. Hopefully what I have said will help to make sure that you or anyone else will enjoy working at Microsoft for a long, long time.
12:26:02 PM 
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