After my time at Luminar, I figured I knew enough to be dangerous at a small company—but I wanted to learn how a well-run company worked at scale. I would end up taking two internships with Microsoft during my time at Stanford. After graduating, I worked with them full-time as a data scientist.
I learned a lot at Microsoft. Satya Nadella is a one-of-a-kind leader. From the beginning, I was amazed by how much everyone there had embraced his messages: to be learn-it-all instead of a know-it-all; or to cultivate a growth mindset—the belief that intelligence is malleable and achievement is gained through effort, not innate ability.
It wasn’t all sunshine. My first summer, I learned some of the things that de-motivate me. I asked my manager how hard we would work, really, and, coming out of a startup, his answer surprised me: he said that he would never expect his team to work more than 40 hours a week, and if we could get our work done in 30 hours, then more power to us. I saw people come into the office at 10am and leave at 4pm. I learned that the company budgets 6 months—yes, half of an entire year—before they expect new hires to fully contribute.
None of this was bad on its own, but I found it at odds with my desire to get things done, and quickly. I also believe that when you’re working on something worthwhile, you won’t mind putting in the time. I’d rather work on something so invigorating that, in the marketplace for my time, it outcompetes some of the other things I might consider doing. Many people never get the chance to choose invigorating work like that—but given the privilege to do so, I became determined not to squander it.
I also caught a glimpse of the long term. One of my clearest memories was from my final round interview in 2018, when I met the director of an organization who showed me all of his commemorative plaques for having shipped products. “Shipped the big bug fix for Windows 98”, he showed me. “Shipped the big bug fix for Windows 2000”. I saw my life flash before my eyes—would I go to work for a big company and look up in 20 years having devoted my life to bug fixes? Let me say: that work is a noble thing. It’s incredibly important that someone do it! But I resolved that life would not be mine.
One interesting thing: I came to Microsoft at time of incredible cultural change. In the summer of 2019, three movements combined to let me do something entirely improbable. In my off hours as a data science intern, I founded and led a group of 150 employees from teams all across the company to create “Microsoft the Musical”: an 8-minute long musical theater-style song, dance, and music video, in the style of Tony Award opening numbers.
The movements brewing at Microsoft at the time were, “bring your whole self to work”, “use Microsoft as a platform to pursue your passions”, and “co-creation”—the idea that everyone in the company ought to be a co-creator of Microsoft culture, not just a consumer of it. “Microsoft the Musical” was an opportunity for people across the company to say, “no matter your background or identity, you belong at Microsoft”. And not just to say it, but to show it as well, by celebrating the products we made and the things that made us unique as people.
It was a herculean effort, but through (1) galvanizing an extraordinarily mission-aligned team (2) leaning into an ambitious-yet-theoretically achievable deadline, (3) practicing inclusion in our organization, and (4) some nontrivial negotiations with teams across Microsoft set up to mitigate risks (ie. institutional “no” people), we made it happen.
Microsoft the Musical taught me how powerful it is to bring everyone along in why you’re doing something as a team. It showed me how much you can achieve when you surround yourself with people who are better than you at each different thing—and you empower them to make their mark.
My top-of-band return offer ultimately came with the observation, “I trust that you can do data science—but if you can get people from 20 different teams at Microsoft to come together and achieve something like that, it’s clear you can move mountains. And I want you here.”
Microsoft was ultimately a chance to practice achieving the improbable, a chance to meet lifelong mentors, and—oh yeah—a chance to do some production data science along the way.