Internship Journal : Into The Void (Entry 36)
So, now without a proper manager I find myself strangely motivated, I have been solving cases and working on sorting out my Final Year Project. I am at present gleefully awaiting the arrival of my Kinect For Windows, as hopefully my project will be akin to HAL9000 , or so I hope. Shame the purchase order hasn’t updated !
In other news I have been finding out about all the deadline set by the Uni that they had no intention of reminding us of, after all, I am sure normal people can remember a handful of dates for 52 weeks without prompting.
I have also been considering what needs to be done to fill my shoes when I leave, as it turns out at least a few people in the team think highly of the work I do, refreshing to know you are liked.
Oh, and for the first time since I started, I have been to lunch with my team – certainly have been missing out on some banter all this time !
Internship Journal : Another One Bites The Dust ! (Entry 35)
Monday saw me in a meeting with my manager, discussing what I will be doing going forward, into the last months of my internship, a scary prospect certainly – but made even more confusing by inconvenient fact that this is my managers last week as my manager !
Monday night saw Me, Alex (@AlexOlivier) and Neil (@SequentialLogic) take some time out to go to Reading University and see a free, and rather amusing stand up act by “The Stand Up Economist” (@standupecon), certainly recommended !
So, to today, my manager has had his leaving presentation and will be gone come Monday, sending my team into manager oblivion – being taken on by another manager who will be leaving in a few weeks. This presents a worrying issue for me, as it seems that my final Uni related tasks need me to have a manager who knows my internship. Shame that, although it does compound the sense that no one has fully appreciated how to handle an intern since my original manager, oh well, into the unknown , that will be 5 managers in a year by the time I go !
Rant over…
Internship Journal : Ahoi ! (Entry 34)
This week around these parts has been the Ahoi! Technology week, apart from Wednesday this has meant an enthralling look at different relevant technologies and how to use them for several hours each day, Netmon – Poweshell – Networking etc.
It has certainly been educational, oh and randomly taking Wednesday Off was good too, now for what seems to be a Friday ritual , the conference call !
Internship Journal : Shiny New Interns (Entry 33)
So, during the weeks of hell one of the things I forgot even happened was my introduction to my replacement. Now, strictly speaking, he is not a replacement at all, there will be no intern in my position in the coming year. He gets to work instead in the XBOX Games Testing area, yeah some say lucky, some say hell. Either way, its my responsibility to help him get to grips with Microsoft.
Wednesday was certainly a day looking forward, Myself, Alex and Neil had lunch with some awesome guys who are hoping in the future to come and work within Microsoft, although they are only at school and college a the moment ! It was also today also that I made a call to my Intern Buddy, he seems excited if a little nervous about the whole thing.
Which brings me to today, Friday – the new interns all arrived looking sparkling for their induction day. It was our duty to meet them and their managers at lunch time, I gave my buddy a lift into work this morning to make his day a little less stressful, naturally his manager didn’t arrive at lunch, but that seems to be par for the course! No idea how his day will go, but I hope its exciting !
I am now off to conference call the hell out of some cases !
Internship Journal : As Predicted! (Entry 32)
Last Friday was a bank holiday – this served to for two things – the owners of the cases I had got angry because of the 4 day weekend, the new cases were mishandled , and the volume did not drop off.
Queue my return on Tuesday, as the only engineer juggling 16 new cases, all of whom had angry customers, and most of which were outside of my ability. Thankfully, that day David also returned however the incoming volume did not drop off. Talk about busy this week, I managed to miss 101 team award presentations and all sorts. Suffice to say I am happy the week is over, and worried that the workload is still on. On the upside Andrei is back as of Monday !
Internship Diary : Fortnight Of Hell ?(Entry 31)
So, I am surprised I am actually still sat here typing this.
The week started fairly normally, except David from my team is off for this week – which Is not odd in the slightest. Cases continued to come in at the normal rate, and the rest of the team managed to cope. It was Wednesday afternoon that things started to go wrong, Andrei from our team had also had a week and a half of Holiday confirmed, not so bad I thought, we are normally quite a slow intake team. Oh no, as soon as Andrei left the office, and I was alone, it became 4 new cases a day. Wednesday, Thursday, Today is a Bank Holiday.
I felt the need to update the blog just in case an angry customer kills me on Tuesday, after all, Monday is also a bank holiday….
Internship Diary : A Storm Is Brewing… (Entry 30)
This week has ended with our usual Comms team meeting, and some epic glass trophies being given out for 20 years at Microsoft ! That’s not much less than my entire life, so Kudos to those people for really being here for the long haul !
We also had an introduction to programming Metro apps presentation, which has been an eye opener – although I am not sure if I can quite bring myself to attack XAML straight away !
Got an interesting week coming up next week, lots of bank holiday and some pretty poor planning from above, I am going to be the only engineer for messaging dev for what seems to be nearly two weeks. I understand people need holiday, but can’t it be a little spread out ?
Lets see how it goes….
Internship Diary : Wasting Time (Entry 29)
So this week we have been talking about new initiatives to help us be more effective, now it may sound like this has something to do with not sitting around twiddling thumbs, well turns out not.
We have been discussing ways to give customers exactly what they need, without taking up excess time. This has been an interesting, helping us to see where time is wasted and how it costs the company and ourselves. There isn’t much detail I can go into for this, but suffice to say - look at your daily life for 10 minutes, you may find that extra hour in the day hidden away !
Internship Journal : And Back Again (Entry 28)
So, back at work after my week off and it was just the usual case of ramping back up to cases. Not helped by a slight lack of them , but this simply gave me time to work on my application. It seems that now it has been somewhat shot down the enthusiasm from those involved has died away. This is a welcome break from the pressure and has allowed me to orient the direction of the project a little better.
Other than this, not much to talk of really !
Internship Journal : A Week Off (Entry 27)
This week I was mostly, well , in bed. Not so sure why, just decided a week off would be good !