Andy Gitsham

'The engineers in my team tend to be involved in strategic projects for our key enterprise customers. They spend a lot of time on site working with our current Microsoft technologies and our future Microsoft technologies; helping customers implement products, implement technology, and get the best value from their Microsoft technologies.'

'I was fortunate enough to be given the chance to build a new business at Microsoft and build the PFE offering – the Premier Field Engineering offering – which is a brand new offering to our customers. We’re doing leading edge work with leading edge technologies, with great people, and we really have a chance to make a difference for our customers.'

'I think if you were to walk down the street or talk to people in the IT industry, they might think the sort of characters that work for Microsoft are your stereotypical technical geek. It’s absolutely not the case. And they’ll probably think as well that there are hundreds of thousands of people who work for Microsoft in the UK and that’s not the case either. We have a very small number of people working directly for Microsoft, we work extensively with our partners and our partner business, and that’s the model we’ve adopted in the UK and, indeed, globally.'

'Career progression for people at Microsoft is really down to the individual. And the great thing about working at Microsoft is that no door is closed, no opportunity isn’t a reality. It’s up to you to craft your next job and your next role or career. Your next role probably isn’t on a piece of paper today. I’ve been quite fortunate to have two or three previous jobs which have all been crafted from a blank piece of paper. That opportunity really does exist for people.'

'In terms of personal qualities, having a role in leadership is a privilege, not a given. And it’s important never to forget that when working with people. At the end of the day, the lifeblood of Microsoft isn’t what ships in white boxes – it’s the people who make that real for our customers. People in my position have to be turned on by getting the right people in the right place at the right job and helping them succeed, and realise their potential.'

Ingrid Jack

'Microsoft Consulting Servers works primarily with enterprise customers – those who have a large number of seats, typically a large number of sites; they’re likely to be global organisations. There’s the opportunity at Microsoft to get involved in technology as it’s being developed. It’s not just about implementing technology, it’s about being involved in the development process.'

'So the real difference between working at Microsoft and working with any other technical consultancy is the chance to work on beta product – product before it’s been released to the marketplace. It’s the chance to influence how that product is developed, and the chance to work with customers as it’s being developed and understand how it can really make life different to them and how it can help them solve their business problems.'

'From an infrastructure perspective there are a number of really significant releases coming up for us this year. Vista, the new desktop operating system, is going to be released at the end of this year and there’s a whole lot of cool stuff in there both for consumers and also for business. And Exchange 2007 is a new release of our messaging product, and I think it’s going to revolutionise the way people interact with their email.'

'No two days are the same working in MCS. You might spend some time working with a customer on a specific problem or you might spend time with them on a strategic development - taking a long time over a project. There’s no guarantee you’re going to be in the same place all day, every day. It’s certainly not an office-based job – you spend an awful lot of time out with customers on their sites, helping them to solve their problem and make the most of Microsoft software.'

'I think that’s part of the joy of the job – the unpredictability. It’s a great place to be – you’ll be surrounded by very capable, very confident, very bright people, which you might find a bit overwhelming to begin with, but it’s a fantastic team of people who will support you.'

Adam Shepherd

'In the infrastructure consulting team, we all specialise in a particular area of the infrastructure. For example, my personal specialism is desktops and the Windows client.'

‘In terms of progression, if I say to my manager, “I want to be in such-and-such a role in five years’ time,” even though they know they’ll be losing one of their team for doing it, they’ll totally support me all the way and tell that we both need to sit down and put together a plan so that I can do that. It’s very much let’s go and figure out how we can help you get to that position that you want to be in.'

'One of the key things Microsoft is great at is obviously the training element – it’s not necessarily formal training all the time; there’s a lot of “silent” training that goes on. What I mean by “silent” training is that there’s a huge technical community within Microsoft; we have these distribution lists where people send emails out to a big group of people so that they can get technical answers back.'

'From a more structured point of view, we have conferences that we can go to throughout the year. One major conference that we go to is an internal conference where we get all the people from the product groups and so on who come and actually deliver sessions. It’s quite unlike any company I’ve ever seen in that the actual campus at Thames Valley Park is much like a university campus. It’s very relaxed, very informal, it makes doing business with the customers really easy.'

'And the people here are amazing – they’re all super-intelligent and very enthusiastic. I’ve not met one person here so far who doesn’t enjoy their job. Just from a social perspective and a sporting perspective, there are so many clubs you can join if you’re interested in sports, and Microsoft will help fund them.'

'There’s a bit of a bad reputation about Microsoft - I’ve heard from people outside who see it as this kind of big, evil empire, but that’s not true. We’re a business, obviously, and we’re out to compete with everyone else in the marketplace, just like any other business, but we’re also a great company in terms of the things we do and the community and the people we support.