In my last post I mentioned that we would be touring the globe visiting some of our international development centers. Our third stop: Copenhagen, Denmark. Take a moment to find out more about one of the 'Softies that works at this location and what he works on. Some pretty interesting stuff happens on our campuses around the world! For a listing of all of our open development roles in Copenhagen, click here. 
All the best - Anne

‘Softie in Question: Christian Heide Damm
Job title: Development Lead on the Microsoft Dynamics AX team

Christian, can you tell us a little bit about what you do?
I work with a Dynamics AX team, which means that we build the backbone administrative system for many companies; managing their financials, production, inventory, trade and more.

Are most of the roles in Copenhagen in Dynamics or are there a good variety of other roles too?
During my 7 plus years here, I have had 3 significantly different roles on 3 different projects. It is very important to me that I am able to move around in the organization, to try out new roles and be on new projects.

Fortunately, the Development Center in Copenhagen is large and varied enough to allow this; we have 600 people working in at least 4 major projects, so there are plenty of opportunities.

What is it like to work at a subsidiary office instead of Microsoft’s headquarters?
We are a relatively small development center – and that means that you get to know many of your co-workers. We feel closer to each other. You don’t feel lost in the crowd. But you still get to work directly on many projects that impact the world of software.

Are the employees primarily from Denmark or is it a pretty international office?
About half of the employees here are non-Danes, and people come from 44 different countries. The multi-nationalism makes it possible for us to develop products that are good a fit with customers across the world. I also love the stories that people tell about their home countries. It’s funny and educational.

Give us the basics of the Copenhagen campus.
It is located 20 km (12 miles) from Copenhagen. Most people come by car, some come by bike and many use public transportation. There’s frequent train service from Copenhagen, and Microsoft has arranged a shuttle bus from the train station to the campus, so it’s quite convenient.
 
The campus is really nice, with gardens, green areas, a small forest, and a lake. There’s even a large grass field on the campus. It gets used for all sorts of activities, like soccer and Frisbee. It’s almost calming to walk around campus.
 
Microsoft offers a large number of social and sports activities through its “Club Sport & More.” There are activities like wine tasting, golf tournament, SCUBA diving, cinema events, skiing trip, swimming lessons, badminton, running and biking.

This week Microsoft shared some news that’s especially heartwarming in this tough economy. Microsoft employees are making a difference in a big way: by giving to others. Not many companies offer a $12K per year match on Employee Giving. Microsoft does. It’s foundational to the culture. And it’s a benefit many Microsoft employees value.

Through the annual Employee Giving Campaign, Microsoft employees raised a record-breaking US$100.5 million in 2011. This topped the previous year’s total with donations to more than 18,000 community organizations across the United States and around the world. Overall, more than 64 percent of the company's employees – about 35,500 – got involved in the Giving Campaign during the year.

Here’s what we heard from a few employees:

“To be honest, that number means more to me than any other statistic Microsoft releases,” says Joe Michaels, a senior director of business development in the Online Services Division. “I think that says more about who we are as a company than any earnings figure or any ranking in a Best Places to Work list.”

“Microsoft’s an awesome company to work for. I get to continually do new things, and with the generosity of the company I help raise money for wonderful organizations,” says Crissy House, a senior product marketing manager for SQL Server.

People who value giving and making a difference in the world have the opportunity to double their dollars with the Microsoft Giving Campaign. They can make a huge impact for the causes they love and support.

• Read the full Giving Campaign story on Microsoft PressPass 
• Learn more about cool things employees are doing on the JobsBlog and the Facebook Fans page
• Apply for cool design jobs, development engineer jobs and more on the Global Careers site

Geek in Question: Mark Gillett

Job title: Corporate VP, Skype Engineering & Operations

Here at JobsBlog, we love Skype. And who doesn’t? (except maybe some telecom execs)

We’re really excited that Skype is joining Microsoft, so we reached out to Mark who runs Skype’s Product, Engineering, Site Operations, Service Operations & Business Operations to get a sense of what it’s like to work for one of the world’s hottest and most beloved technologies.

Mark, what personally attracted you to working for Skype?
This is one of the few companies where millions of people use your product every day. But beyond that, we feel like an important part of those peoples’ lives. They use Skype for reasons ranging from ordering a pizza to connecting with loved ones separated by thousands of miles.   

Every day, we hear stories of fathers attending their baby’s birth by Skype, folks seeing weddings of far-flung relatives and people connecting in other ways that we never even imagined here at Skype. 

Why is now an exciting time to work at Skype? 
Over the past two years, we’ve moved from the desktop to be truly multi-platform with the addition of iOS and Android. The next 12 months will see significant growth with development efforts in Windows Phone and Windows 8, which will bring the new, fast and fluid Metro interface to Skype. It’ll also drive our mission of making Skype “Always on and Always Connected” for millions of users.   

We started as a business with a disruptive agenda – voice across the internet that “just works,” and was free for everyone. We care about enabling communications across geography, device and modality.

What are some of the big challenges that engineers will have to solve?
Over the next year, we’ll have a range of cutting-edge technical challenges. These will include exploiting the power of the WindowsRT networking stack, optimizing our group video calling technology for new microprocessors and building notification services that function at hundreds of millions of users of scale.  

How would you summarize the work culture at Skype?
We “live” our product and are a truly international organization, with engineering at scale in Estonia, Sweden, Czech Republic, Russia, London and the US in both Palo Alto and New York.

We’re agile and consumer focused. We aim to make our products and services better every day and get our innovations into our users’ hands as quickly as possible. 

We work in small teams with a high degree of interaction and communication and value commitment, shipping and technical excellence in equal measure.  We want to “move the dial” and find new ways to enhance communications all the time. We want Designers, Program Managers, Developers and Testers alike to be able to link what we do today directly to a better product and better experience for our users – on every platform.

What makes an otherwise qualified candidate an especially great fit for Skype?
We have tens of nationalities in almost as many locations worldwide, so a real interest in and sensitivity to working with a diverse range of people is a big benefit at Skype. 

Experience shipping consumer products and services, particularly at scale, can often give a candidate an edge. The best potential Skype candidates show a real passion and deep interest in their profession often with as much enthusiasm about something outside of work.

Where do you see Skype as a technology in 5 years?
We see Skype continuing to evolve to offer more and better communication – synchronously with audio and video, between groups supported by cloud services and asynchronously with rich video.  We believe people want to do more than just communicate, they want to share experiences. Our challenge is to remove the barriers of hardware, software, network and geography to bring people together.

What do you think Skype most stands to gain from joining Microsoft?
We believe Skype stands to benefit from being a part of the bigger, but passionately product- and engineering-focused business Microsoft has built. Bringing our ideas together will provide our community with more, better products and services over the next few months and years.

 ‘Softie in Question: Mike Miles
Position at Microsoft: Principle Group Program Manager
Group: Bing
Location: London

Quick rundown on you role, your team, and a bit about yourself:
I have a degree in Computer Science and Mathematics and have worked in the software industry for the last 20+ (yikes!) years. I started my career as a developer and worked my way up to a director level engineering manager at a medium sized start-up before joining Microsoft. Ten years ago, I joined Microsoft and helped lead some of our new STB projects in Microsoft’s then most recent acquisition, WebTV.  I spent the next seven years in online services, primarily MSN (this when both Windows Live and Bing were still part of MSN) and three years ago, became the third or fourth employee of a brand new group within Bing – Search Technology Center (STC) Europe.

Currently, I am a Group Program Manager for STC Europe and have two different teams and roles.  First, I lead a PM team responsible for the global development of some Bing’s more interesting features - Auto Suggest, Related Search, Speller and ‘Combined Alterations’. Collectively, we refer to these features as Query Formulation and our core mission is to help refine and improve the quality of the user’s query and thereby increase the satisfaction the user has with their search session on Bing. 

Second, I lead a team responsible for ensuring that Bing’s entire engineering team understands and prioritizes the quality and feature improvements that help make our international markets successful. It’s an interesting fast-paced role and I’ve been lucky to work alongside a tremendously strong SDE team to lead an outstanding organization of ~25 PMs and international SDETs who are passionate about Bing and the opportunity to make a difference to the 100s of millions of users word-wide and the 10s of billions of queries that they generate every year.

Tell me more about the Microsoft offices in London?   
Our London office is one of 5 main offices for STC-Europe; others are in Munich DE, Paris FR, Wroclaw PL and Bellevue WA.  All of our offices have a unique culture and product focus but all offices have a definite start-up feel and passion about the Bing product and  search industry overall. The focus of the London office is on Query Formulation as mentioned above.   The team is very diverse talent wise – we have Editors, Testers, Program Managers, Developers, Machine Learning and Information Retrieval expertise, and quite a few PhDs on the team.  We are quite culturally diverse as well – in our London office, we have people who speak French, Polish, German, Italian, Spanish, Catalan and, of course, English.  And the sense of team is very strong, we play football after hours, foosball during breaks and aren’t afraid to have a pint (or two) after work. 
 
What is it like to work at Microsoft in one of our subsidiary offices compared to working in the US Headquarters?
Working in one of the Subs is a great experience. Team members are much more connected with the business and given the relatively small team size, it’s easy to influence product direction and make an impact.  While we are well connected with Bing’s ‘core team’ in Bellevue, we maintain a fair amount of autonomy in terms of setting direction, pace and culture of our team.  And of course, we also have strong relationships with other remote sites in Hyderabad, Beijing, and Silicone Valley and of course our other STC-Europe offices
 
What was the reason you considered applying to Microsoft?  How did you find out about the specific role you are currently in right now? 
I’ve been in Microsoft for almost 10 years now and what interested me originally was the breadth of products that Microsoft is involved in, the diversity of technology used across the company, the variety of disciplines and backgrounds across the company, the leadership position that Microsoft enjoys in a multiplicity of business segments and the opportunities all of that allows for career development. 

My first role for the company was leading the development of a new STC for MSN TV (Microsoft’s acquisition of WebTV).  This was a challenging role for me since it was the first consumer focused product that I’ve been involved in and the project was quit complex, comprising hardware, embedded systems, client and  server elements and distribution channel.  I have had very diverse roles in the company since then and that career diversity is one of the things that keeps me excited about Microsoft. I was lucky enough to have good relationships with our then VP and who encouraged me to explore a role in our new offices in Europe.  I spoke to a number of people about the role and plans for STC-Europe and was hooked. It’s been a fantastic role for me and has been a great opportunity for my family. 
 
Any tips to job seekers around the world interested in relocating to London and working at Microsoft?
We are always recruiting and currently hiring in STC Europe’s London, Munich and Bellevue offices. If we don’t have a position that currently matches your interests and experience, it’s possible that we will again in the near future.  We are looking for anyone with expertise, experience and passion to build a world-class Search product with a special focus on Developers who have Machine Learning, Information Retrieval or related Computer Science background.  I need to provide updated contact information.

Dear JobsBlog: I am a developer with 6 years of experience working outside of the US. American recruiters have been rejecting my application and I suspect that it is because of the international-nature of my coding experience. I thought that coding was not affected by place. Does the location of my coding experience really matter?

-International Dev

Dear International Dev: It is unlikely that they would pass on you based solely on the geography of where your coding experience is gained. That said, there are many factors at play when considering candidates with international experience – some of which, may inhibit our ability to consider you further.

Here are a few personal examples where I’ve rejected resumes with International experience. Perhaps one of these applies and will help shed some light?

The candidate requires a new visa, yet none are available. There really aren’t many options for overcoming this obstacle. No matter how strong a resume may be, there is a legal barrier here, which must be respected.

The candidate still lives abroad. This is a problem of time and money and – as painful as it might be to admit – it’s not about picking the absolute best candidate. Frankly, interviewing an international candidate takes longer and costs more money. For some positions, it might not make sense when a domestic and equally qualified candidate can be found faster. 

The resume isn’t the best match for the role. The years of experience listed are just a number; other qualifications must also be considered, as well as the depth of that experience and the overall quality of the resume.

The important thing I’d want candidates to know here is that Resume Review is both a quantitative and comparative process.  Recruiters are evaluating resumes based both on the requirements of the position and how that resume compares to the others in the stack.    

The fine print/some critical reflection: with any generic question, it’s important to remember that each position is different in what it will and won’t consider. A personal frustration, which I’m sure many of our readers share, is that most job boards (and job descriptions) do not make it easy to search and filter positions based on the above type of criteria. 

Our systems also do not currently provide automated updates to a candidate at the earliest stages of consideration. This is commonly perceived as the “Black hole effect,” and unfortunately, not going away soon.  Just know that recruiters like myself are spending hours each week reading the resumes which are submitted to us, and there is *usually* a good reason if we aren’t moving forward.

-Kenji