Karol Kaczmarek

First month at Microsoft is over. And it was really a blast! Not only because that I’ve joined a great team to work on the very interesting project (which I unfortunately can’t write about, but it will most probably be included in Windows 8 Server ), but also because of numerous great events which accompany the whole internship!

And I definitely am allowed to elaborate on it a little bit more here . Great events happen literally every day here! I’ve just checked my employee calendar and it looks like in whole July there were only a couple of days without special events… or I missed something What are these? In this post I would like to list some of the most interesting to give you some insight .

Intern Spotlight Speaker Series
These are weekly presentations just for interns during which departments’ executives deliver speeches about their products, goals and plans. These events have really great attendance… and it’s not because of free pizza and beer. Wait… isn’t it? ;P.

Puzzle day
This is my favorite so far. Whole day of solving amazing, tricky and sometimes witty puzzles and running across the Microsoft campus. That was A LOT of fun!

Intern day of caring
During day of caring interns spend one day of their internship outside of their offices, volunteering in NGOs. My group cleared 88,345 square feet of invasive plants in beautiful Seward Park… no idea how someone calculated it

And after volunteering there was huge barbecue prepared on the soccer field.

Stay late & code events
I think the name is clear enough . Well… some of us have it almost every day even without attending This event is fun in a little bit different way though… probably not everyone can understand it (I am sure you do though! ), but staying late and working in a group on your side projects can be fun as well!

Game nights
In Microsoft there is a lot of gamers, so naturally, there are also events for them!

Intern social group events
What is intern social group? It’s a bunch or interns who generally start internship at the same time, have FTE (Full Time Employee) assigned and hang out together!
These events are a lot of fun. It’s enough to say that my first one was at Sky High Sports Center in Bellevue:




Meetings organized by recruiters
My recruiter, Amanda organized really cool event named International Interns Pizza Party. Pizza was tasty, but the best part was that I finally could play in my first band ever!

Special presentations just for your department!
These are a little bit smaller, but also interesting, mainly because subjects are directly connected with products you work on and you can meet and network with people directly from your department. Btw. I am working in STB (Server & Tools Business) .

Breakfast series
Breakfast series presentations start very early and I am a night owl, so I haven’t attend any yet I heard they are good though! If you like getting up early, definitely go for it and you will get to know a lot of useful stuff!

Excursions
There is a lot of interesting things to do around Seattle. Hiking in Mount Rainier National Park or sailing on the bay are just some examples of activities organized especially for you during internship!

Intern signature event
This is the most important intern event which will gather all MS interns in… Woodland Zoo next Thursday! Could you think about better place for such meeting? I simply can’t wait to be able to write more about it!

4th of July in Gas Works Park
This one is not organized by Microsoft (fireworks are co-sponsored by MS though), but you definitely don’t want to miss it!

I hope I didn’t forget about any relevant event, but you can already see it was a lot of things going on! And that’s just one month… a very busy one
There will be a lot of things happening later on, so after finishing work and leaving your office… the day is definitely not over yet!

First weekend almost passed by. I arrived to Seattle Tacoma Airport at about 11pm, after 18-hour journey. My friend (with whom I was only emailing so far) Szymon was waiting there to pick me up and take to Redmond. During a drive it occured that I will stay in the same complex where he is living, around 100m from each other. Good luck! We spent 2 hours talking and sipping a beer .

The place I live in is amazing, fitness center is just next door, free billard, jacuzzi and even small cinema not much further. I hope I will have time to make use of it after work

Next day Szymon helped me to get to the car rental agency and I rented a car to look around during first days here. It was “my” first car with automatic gearbox, but it’s probably easier to switch from manual to automatic than the other way .

I didn’t have any food in the fridge, so I started a day in classic American style, eating some fast food in KFC. I hope it won’t become my habit . In the afternoon my roommate Damian invited me to meet his friends and play video games. I usually don’t spend my spare time in this way, but I thought it’s a great occasion to meet first interns… and it was:) We spent a nice couple of hours playing and talking.

After that someone wanted to see a cake which was famous of being the inspiration for some game… I really cannot remind myself it’s title right now. Anyway… it was supposed to be in the bakery near their place… 1 mile or so. Unfortunately it was a very long mile, as it took us more than half an hour to get there… and coming back was even longer. Pretty long walk just to see some cake. But this is it, impressive, huh?

On sunday we went to see Snoqualmie falls, 82m high waterfall between Snoqualmie and Fall City, about 30 kilometers east of Redmond. After seeing Niagara falls I didn’t expect it will amaze me, but it was also really huge. Waterfalls always remind me how powerful is the nature, so I like just staying and watching them.

Now it’s around 9pm and I feel pretty much tired. I think the jet lag is still working against me :/ This night I woke up at 4am and couldn’t fall asleep, so I log in to skype and talked with my girlfriend, family and friends for almost 3 hours. Then I took a shower and… went to sleep again I am afraid this night will be similar… we will see
Tomorrow is my first day at Microsoft so I hope I won’t come there after staying awake whole night

Everything ends. Even my one year of studies in Austria, which at the beginning seemed to me so long, passed incredibly quickly. Unfortunately.

Now I am sitting at the airport Klagenfurt, drinking cocktail and preparing my mind for next big adventure… summer internship at Microsoft Headquarters in Redmond (~20km from Seattle). I feel like one of my dreams is coming true right now. I will be a member of one team in the Business and Tools department, but the exact project I will work on is still not known… at least not to me .

The process of getting an internship is, as usually, going through few interviews and doing your best there What makes Microsoft interviews different is that they are very technical and after few (or even not) “warm-up” questions you have to solve technical problems. First you need to present the idea and then write the code on paper, which is much harder than typing it on keyboard (and taking advantage of IntelliSense etc.). I had two interviews at Poznan University of Technology when Microsoft Interviewers came there last year and then three additional in Munich during the “second round”.

Luckily I was accepted and during next three months I will try to write some notes about my experience at Microsoft