Meet 'Ian Gilroy', he's an ADC.
- Hello Ian, who are you?
I’m Ian Gilroy.
- Have you always worked in the ADC Team?
I joined Microsoft way back in November 2001 as an ADC. Before that I worked at a startup software retailer/distributor doing all kinds of technical stuff.
- What sort of technologies do you use as an ADC?
I think that there’s a combination of the key development platform technologies that everyone in the team uses on a day-to-day basis and then other products and technologies on top of that. Those additional technologies are usually driven by the areas that your customer is working in or from your personal interests. For example, one of my customers was using BizTalk a few years ago so I decided that I needed to develop some BizTalk skills to assist them effectively. That’s lead to doing BizTalk-related work with a number of customers.
- What do you enjoy about working at Microsoft?
The main thing is that, whatever you’re doing, you get to work with lots of smart colleagues and customers. In the ADC role you get the opportunity to work with lots of different customers and different technologies which is a great way to build your skills and experience.
- How do you keep skills up to date with the latest technologies?
It can be difficult. I think that the key thing is to focus on key areas while trying to maintain an appreciation of a much broader range of technologies – there’s just too much out there to try to become an expert in everything. We occasionally get the opportunity to attend formal training courses but most of my learning is via books, blogs, product documentation and hands-on experience.
- What software do you use as part of your role?
The role involves a lot of different software. There are the development and server tools you’d expect – Visual Studio, BizTalk Administration Console, SQL Management Studio and so on. When diagnosing a problem or just trying to figure out how something works I often use things like Reflector and the SysInternals suite of utilities and, occasionally, WinDbg. There are internal Microsoft tools for things like time tracking and submitting expenses. Finally, I seem to spend a lot of time inside Outlook and Word!
- How would you describe a typical day as an ADC?
The most interesting thing about the role is that there’s probably no such thing as a typical day. Where and how you work is determined by your customers and what you’re doing with them. Some days are spent on customer sites, some working from home and some in the office. You could be delivering a presentation, helping with performance tuning, discussing application architecture around a whiteboard, writing some sample code or preparing for some future piece of work...or you could be doing something else entirely. The role definitely needs good time management and the ability to quickly swap context from one piece of work to another.
- What’s your technology of the moment?
I recently attended a Silverlight course so that’s something I’ve been spending some time playing with. In terms of what I’ve been doing with customers, I’d say that BizTalk has been a regular feature.
- What’s your best and worst moment as an ADC?
My best moments have probably been when I’ve been part of a larger engagement that has gone really well and generated positive customer feedback – a big proof-of-concept project or writing some sample code to solve an urgent customer issue, for example. The worst moment was probably when I somehow managed to schedule two onsite customer visits for the same time and day. I’ve only done that once but I still cringe about it today. As I said above, time management is really important!
- Thanks for your time; do you have a closing comment?
To the optimist, the glass is half full. To the pessimist, the glass is half empty. To the engineer, the glass is twice as large as it needs to be.