One Year at Microsoft | John Bowersox

One year ago today, I joined Microsoft. It’s hard to believe that a full 365 days have already passed.

As I reflect on the past year, I believe I’ve grown a lot as a person through the challenges, opportunities and support I’ve received.

REMOTE WORK: I am 100% remote working from my home office (master bedroom). It’s been a year and I still have not met anyone on my team in person. As the world appears to be moving back to what we all used to know as normal I’m looking forward to some travel and meeting people in person.
OFFICE SPACE: I was hoping that my dedicated office space would be completed by now. Unfortunately, it has taken more time than anticipated to find trusted contractors to handle some of the more complex work. I’m hopeful that I’ll be in that space by the end of August.
SKILLS: Azure continues to add new services and features. Keeping up with the constant change as well as the differences between our Public and Government Cloud Offerings could be a full-time job.

CUSTOMERS: Based on the needs of my organization I quickly picked up some customer contracts. It took some time to fully understand the business and teams I would be working with. A year in I can now say that I have forged some great working relationships and believe that I provide real value to those I work with.
TEACHING: Part of my current role involves running training opportunities for our customers. These can be anything from formal classroom type training with specific material, proof-of-concepts, workshops, etc. I find this part of my role to be the most enjoyable.
LEARNING: Microsoft is huge on encouraging learning. The required corporate and role-based training is particularly good and better than what I have gone through with previous employers.
CERTIFICATIONS: As a full-time employee I get the benefit of taking free Microsoft Certification Exams. Since joining Microsoft, I have taken five exams and added five new Azure certifications to my list.

MANAGEMENT: Not much to say here – my management team is awesome. As a new employee they have been super supportive of the needs I have had over the past year.
TEAM: My role as a Customer Engineer falls into the Individual Contributor category. While I can handle many of my assigned engagements via my own knowledge (and the occasional Bing/Google search) my team is always ready to jump in to lend a hand, answer a question, or just provide some social interaction.
FAMILY: Working from home full time while my wife homeschools our two children can prove to be a bit of a challenge at times. Listening and understanding have been the key. We have made it work and we are a stronger family for it.

I can’t wait to see what my second year at Microsoft will bring!