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September 22, 2008
Fifteen Years at Microsoft
Today is my fifteen year anniversary at Microsoft. I will soon (at our group all-hands meeting on Friday, I presume) receive a 15-year anniversary award (it's the one on the left, with the orange highlight). Also, in honor of a tradition of murky origin, I brought in some apples from our backyard. Next month there is an evening event in Seattle for all 15-year people, and I also got a nice note from my manager. Nothing much else happens; there is no vacation accrual bump at 15 years (at 12 years you get 5 weeks, where I sit to this day). On my 10-year anniversary I received 10 shares of stock (and back then 15-year people got 15 shares), but that seems to have stopped. I don't mean to sound ungrateful: the service award is much nicer now and costs more than the value of 15 shares of stock, so I prefer it this way.Since my "service award date" (the term of art around here) was adjusted to fix up the gap in my employment, September 22 has no historical connotation; nothing earth-shattering happened to me on September 22, 1993. We had just shipped NT 3.1 a couple of months before, and I was presumably cranking away on the IPX stack for NT 3.5. According to Wikipedia, September 22 seems to be a singularly unexciting day. Is is often the Autumnal Equinox and there are 100 days until the end of the year, but nothing really happened. The Battle of Zutphen? First issue of National Geographic? The South Atlantic Flash? The most notable person born on this day appears to be Tommy Lasorda (Happy 81st, Tommy).
I wonder how Microsoft HR calculates your adjusted start date. I worked at the House of Bill from March 5, 1990 to April 28, 2000, then started again on November 17, 2003. With PowerShell it is easy, if you avoid the "off by one" error:
PS C:\> [DateTime]"11/17/2003" - ([DateTime]"4/28/2000" - [DateTime]"3/5/1990" + 1)
Wednesday, September 22, 1993 11:59:59 PM
Posted by AdamBa at September 22, 2008 09:50 AM
Comments
congratulations on your fifteen years, and btw, michael faraday was born this day, 1791. ;-)
Posted by: Oisin g. at September 22, 2008 06:17 PM
Congrats! My 15 year date was 12 Sept 2008. Like you it doesn't mean much to me. I originally hired 17 June 1991 and for 10 years June 17th was my date. I'm looking forward to the 15 year dinner (I missed the ten year dinner since I left after ten years and one day).
Posted by: Lee Hart at September 25, 2008 04:01 PM
