One year at Microsoft!!!
Today (06/Jan/2021) I am celebrating my first year anniversary at Microsoft.
I remember how excited my family and I were on 6th of January of 2020 (Día de Reyes/Three Kings Day) for the gift of working at Microsoft Corporation (MSFT).
What a blessing, especially in the year of 2020, and in the symbolic day of 6th of January.
Going back to the past, you can see below, my LinkedIn post on my first week at Microsoft.
Some weeks later, in February, 2020, I had the privilege to visit Microsoft Headquarters in Redmond, USA, and to participate in our internal event called Microsoft Ready 2020 in Seattle, USA (Winter version).
I also had the privilege to enjoy the beautiful city of Seattle and to have a great time with the Microsoft UK and Global team.
My life completed changed in March and April, when I got sick. It is still hard to talk and to remember this time, but during the difficult moments, I could see very clear the hands of God in my life and the love, caring and kindness of many people in my life.
The year of 2020 is the year that taught me in a very spiritual, profound and personal way about how blessed I am to breath, to be alive and how fortunate I am to have friends and family who care and love me.
I also felt very blessed to have the support of NHS and Microsoft during the difficult times.
From April/May I was able to recover my health and live a life full of joy with my family again, following government guidance related to the COVID Pandemic, until the end of the year of 2020. (We had some other challenges, but nothing compared to March and April).
Isabel is born
On 1st of June of 2020, my third daughter, our baby girl Isabel, was born in a sunny day in England. She is now 7 months years old.
In the year of 2020, my wife and I achieved a new family record: we had one daughter in 3 different countries, with three different languages and three different currencies. We had Ana Eliza in Sao Paulo, Brazil (2013), Helena in Madrid, Spain (2016) and Isabel in the United Kingdom (2020). I believe this achievement makes us a very international family.
We were so glad that after 3 months that Isabel was born, we were able to go to Church in September, 2020, as a family.
During this difficult year we had the privilege to enjoy nature and to reflect on how important is for us to care for this world, we even took some family decisions to help reduce CO2 emissions in our daily life and to live a more sustainable life.
Working at Microsoft in 2020
What can I say about working at Microsoft that the world does not already know?
Probably nothing. But let me try to leave some words about my personal experience.
It is important to remember that I am not new to the Microsoft family, because I first started working at Avanade (a Microsoft and an Accenture company) in April, 2018 in London, UK, and since that time I felt very motivated to work with Data & AI Azure (Cloud) projects.
The decision to join Microsoft in 2020 was relatively easy for me because of the experience I previously had working with Microsoft technology at Avanade/Accenture, and I felt very inspired to move to Microsoft Corporation when the opportunity arrived.
My main goal by accepting the offer to join Microsoft was to make a bigger impact in the world. I also admire Microsoft`s CEO Satya Nadella very much, as a person and as a leader, and all his leadership about Growth Mindset.
I have to admit that my open source background and my love for UNIX/Linux, Python, R, Java, Hadoop was something that made me think a lot about working with Microsoft Azure on 2018, and made me re-think again when I received the offer to join Microsoft on 2020, and that I could think maybe as an outsider or to feel different from the Microsoft developer community. But in less then one month working as a Microsoft FTE (full time employee) I figured more how strong open source is at Microsoft, it is big and it will stay long, it is now part of Azure/Microsoft.
At Microsoft we embrace diversity and Azure is a great place to be if you love open source. By the way, Microsoft owns GitHub and is now one of the most open source contributors in the world. I work daily with open source and Azure.
At Microsoft I have total space to use my open source, Linux, Python, Java, Scala, R, Big Data, Analytics, Artificial Intelligence, Machine Learning, Data Science skills.
I have the privilege to help customers to have the best of the Data & AI Cloud world and it brings great satisfaction to make our customers successful and to empower them, specially in the year of 2020, where being digital was the new normal and the only way to survive.
In summary:
1. Microsoft Services and Products are changing our world and helping many companies to survive this pandemic world.
2. Working at Microsoft is fun.
3. People are very open, friendly and doing all they can to excel at work and in life in general.
4. Microsoft is playing an important role in the world in the Cloud, AI/ML and Big Data space and I feel very happy to be part of this digital transformation.
My advice for people who would like to join Microsoft is to simply apply for a job.
I am sure you will find something for you.
Thank you Microsoft for this amazing first year!
(Let’s not forget that we had #Brexit in 2020 as well)
