Just started this week at Microsoft as a summer intern.

My position is Software Development Engineer in the Core Networking Team of Core OS Division (COSD). Our team owns Windows Core Networking APIs and technologies such as Winsock, TCP/IP stack, WFP, IPsec, IPv6, WSK, WinINet, Http.sys, WinHttp, QoS, and System.Net. And my job for the summer is mainly investigating aspects of wininet.dll that we can improve. This can be achieved by trying out different ideas and tracking performance gains of those improvements. By focusing on performance of wininet.dll, essentially we are trying to speed up IE, and lots of other Microsoft and third-party components that utilizes wininet.dll as the HTTP client.

The first day at Microsoft was a long and somewhat boring new employee orientation. Finally at 4:30p that day I met with my mentor Rick James and manager/boss Ivan Pashov. They are really nice people and helped me with The second day, my computers are pretty much set up. My development machine is a quad core at 2.66GHz with 8GB of RAM. And at first I got an old test machine, but somehow it got toasted (I promise it wasn’t my fault). So I ended up in our admin, Suzanne’s office. Suzanne is really nice and she gave me a new machine. Now my new test machine has an AMD 64-bit dual core CPU at 2.90GHz with 2GB of RAM. I also have two LCD screens and a nice Microsoft keyboard that splits in the middle, forcing me to get used to hitting Y with my right hand (I never noticed that I should be using my right hand to hit Y). The third day my E-mail and phone start to work, and I started to appear in their database. Due to the massive scale of Microsoft, it took a long time to get my record replicated throughout the corp network. And the phone they have for me is a really cool one. It is an IP phone that connects using Ethernet. It has a touch screen and a fingerprint reader. It uses Office Communicator and sync all the contacts I have with the server. I think IP phone is a cool idea for offices because you will be able to keep your number when moving from office to office. However there is also the drawback that if your corp network somehow fails, which happens all the time in firms, your phone would not work either.

One of the best feeling working at Microsoft is that they trust me as an intern with the entire Windows 7 source code. I was able to check out the massive code base and play with it. Maybe it’s just me, but it feels like dreams come true when you touch and modify the source of Windows. For sure I will have a wonderful summer learning Windows in depth.

The benefits and perks working for Microsoft are just awesome. There are so many, so my list is kind of messy here. First of all, the monthly salary is much higher than that of the industry average for interns. Free soda, coffee, tea and other soft drinks are everywhere in office buildings. There is a huge “Microsoft Mall” inside of Microsoft campus itself. Pretty much everything around Seattle is potentially discounted for Microsoft employees, including lots of restaurants and cell phone service carriers. The corporate housing came fully furnished with bi-weekly house keeping, sort of like an extended stay hotel. The free bus pass provided works everywhere in Puget Sound area free of charge. The pro sporting club membership also comes free with employment. Also the shuttle connectors on Microsoft campus are mostly hybrid cars with wireless transceivers that tell the drivers who and where to pick up and drop off. Simply go to a receptionist and ask for a shuttle, the computer will tell exactly which car will come pick you up along with the ETA. And of course all the sneak peaks and Microsoft products are shared within the corporate network. So basically the idea is to provide interns with pretty much the same set of benefits and perks as permanent full-time employees.

Anyway, I am quite enjoying the summer here at Microsoft. Exciting things are happening every day. And my schedule is always packed.

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