I'm Moving to Redmond
Well it's probably old news for many people...
https://www.microsoft.com/nz/presscentre/articles/2007/newleadership.mspx
https://computerworld.co.nz/news.nsf/news/CCD674FACCC2FD78CC25738B007910B2
My family and I are making the move to Redmond at the start of next year. in fact as I write this blog post I'm sitting in a hotel room in Redmond town centre (Marriott Residence Inn) after being over here for a week 'house hunting'.
It was not really my plan to head off to Redmond after returning to NZ only three and a half years ago. But I've been given a great opportunity to work for the corporate version of the team that I run in New Zealand, which is the Developer & Platform Evangelism (D&PE) team. It's a great opportunity to understand how Microsoft works in it's corporate headquarters and also develop some additional perspective as I get to look at every market across the globe (all scales and all stages of development) in this role.
The official title for my new role is 'Director of Business Management' for the world-wide D&PE field, what exactly does that mean? Well I guess I'll only now for sure in a few months time ;) What I do know is that I'll be running the team that is responsible for running the following key processes for the world-wide D&PE field: target setting, resource allocation, communication, strategy and core review process. It should be a lot of fun and I know I'm joining a great team of people in Seattle.
One of the people who will just be down the corridor from me is Frank , Frank works in the same team as I do so the ANZ team are slowly taking over Microsoft corporate (actually there are heaps of us up there but at least two more in this team now).
It's the right time for me to change roles at Microsoft - I've been there for a while and grown the team I look after significantly. We had a great year last year where we were recognised as the best team of our size world-wide. The individuals I'm leaving behind are just awesome, so it's time for me to move on and give someone else a shot at D&PE in NZ.
I'll miss the customers and partners I've worked with in NZ and I'll especially miss my direct team (the list is missing Tarryn, we must update that) and my peers in the leadership team - we have had a great time over the last 3 years!