This morning I accepted an offer for a job on the Visual Studio team in Redmond (Seattle). My wife and I are super excited about this opportunity. Unfortunately it means that I’ll no longer be an MVP. (A small price to pay I guess).
Scott Hanselman summed it up well when he joined Microsoft last year with this image:
“Most of us spend our time over in the red circle doing stuff someone will pay us to do. If you’re lucky, you spend your time in-between them, doing stuff you’re good at also. Sometimes something comes along that puts you right in that sweet spot and you have to go for it. Will this be my dream job? Could be, I don’t know, but if it’s not, it might get me a lot closer.”
The goal
Back in 2002 I holidayed to that part of the world (North America/Canada), and I said to myself:
“I want to come back here, but not just for a holiday”
Since then, the goal has been refined a little to: “I want to work for MS in Redmond doing TFS stuff” and everything I’ve been doing has been working towards that goal. It just shows the importance of goal setting.
The role
The title of the job is “Program Manager”, which is a fairly generic title that overlaps people skills & technical skills. You can learn more about it here at JobsBlog. My particular role will be on Joe Schwetz’s team which is responsible for maintaining all of Microsoft’s internal version control systems (including TFS). The role is a little gray at the moment, but essentially I’ll be using my consulting/TFS knowledge to help drive internal adoption of TFS with other MS teams (currently at 13,500 users). I believe another part of the role will be bubbling up internal lessons learnt to the outside world.
When?
We’re still finalising a start date, but we’re aiming for June 16th. That means the next 6 weeks are going to be pretty hectic while my wife and I pack up our house & lives to be moved.
The blog & community sites
Don’t worry, I’m not going to stop blogging. What I’m thinking of doing though, is changing the focus of ozgrant.com to be a travel-blog, and continue my TFS blogging over at blogs.msdn.com.
At this stage the oztfs.com mailing list and tfsbuild.com build recipes sites will continue as normal.
19 Comments
Hey Grant. Congrats on the new job, role and the big move. We’ll have to get you up to Edmonton to speak at the UG sometime after you get settled in.
Great stuff Grant… congratulations!
Gratz dude!!!!
Oh no! You’ve been co-opted by the borg! Resistance is futile
Well done, mate! And congratulations!
About time!
Congrats!!
You will be greatly missed. Thank you for all your help this past year. We couldn’t have done it without you.
Congratulations GH!
Congratulations Grant! Another Australian taking over Redmond
Good luck with the move and have a great time.
Congrats..least you’ll be surrounded by lots of Aussies..not too big a culture shock!
The things people will do to escape a Canberra winter! Wait until you get a Seattle winter
Well done Grant – enjoy it, and look up Peter Torr … he’s been there 6 years now and will know all the tricks..
Congrats! I’m sure it’ll be great.
It was only a matter of time!
. Congrats and good luck! 
Well done Grant. Hopefully, it puts you squarley in that ’sweet spot’. You’ll be missed.
Well it’s about time they hired you!
Congrats!
Welcome and Congratulations!!!
Congratulations Grant.
Congratulations Grant!
Nicely done, Grant. Congrats!
Congrats Dude!!!
Knew it was just a matter of time…
Hey Grant, bit late but congrats none the less. Awesome stuff and am very happy for you. So whats the timeframe?
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[...] Grant Holliday Team System MVP – Canberra, Australia Skip to content AboutContactTools « I’ve accepted a job with Microsoft [...]
[...] over two months ago I interviewed for a position on the VSTS team in Redmond, Seattle. I hastily accepted the offer and after jumping through some visa hoops, I’ve relocated from Canberra, [...]