I think about anniversaries and sometimes they loom in front of me with the anticipation of accomplishment or dread. When I first started at Microsoft in September 2005 I remember picking my first Corpnet password. I read the policy saying it would need to be changed within 90 days. I told my cynical self that I will never need to change it. They would find out I was a fraud long before then.
When I hit four years I started to notice the speeches they five year people gave. The 10 of them got to go up during and all hands and speak for a minute or so. I worried and planned what I would say for the next year. When the anniversary came there was something like 40 of us so there was no public speech. I got recognized in a team meeting which suited me better. I was, however, planning on leaving MS at that time so my words I don’t even remember. Always grateful for the employment I was burned out at the time. Or as I put it then it took too long to build stuff and I wanted to build things.
So I took my gap year or more precisely gap 14 months. That caused the MS anniversary reward tracking mechanism to get a bit messed up. Four months after my return to MS and during a 60 person all hands I was surprise presented with my five year award. I sheepishly said I already had it. They let me keep the trophy anyway so I had two five year crystals.
Because of my 14 month gap my actual 10 year anniversary was a bit hard to calculate. Ok, not that hard for a neurotic. Even one that works at MS. On the subway on the way home I wrote the broad outline of my “speech” -- truths and motivations are for you to fine, believe in the best of people because then at least you will feel better -- and calculated the date. The date came and I received an email asking where sent the crystal too. It arrived a month later and now sits on a chest in my bedroom next to the five year crystal and other MS trinkets I care about.
No speech, no words of advice. Do I have something to say? Yes, but I’ll save that for another post. Does it matter what I say? Not really, but it does make me feel better.
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