[Note: This post is quite long. In it, I talk about my first position at Microsoft. I talk about why I loved it. I also talk about what I didn't like at all about it - especially near the end. Finally, I talk about the transition from "the field" (working for Microsoft, but outside of Redmond) to working on campus (the mothership). It might be an interesting read for those of you who wonder what life is like at Microsoft. I get asked about MS all the time, so I assume quite a few of you are curious. I hope, then, that you'll excuse the length. I simply tried to be thorough. I won't be hurt if you choose to skip this post and just go outside for a smoke instead.]

When Paul Murphy decided that he was going to try and hire me to come work at Microsoft, he got a few phone calls.

They were, in the corporate world, the rough equivalent of having a brick thrown through your window with a note tied to it. Some people didn't think it was a good idea to hire Rory Blyth. He's a bad guy. He's a troublemaker. He stirs up controversy. He writes about sex and God. He'll ruin you and your team. There will be a great plague. Fish will fall from the sky, and the ground will give way beneath you.

I'd like to point out the obvious, which is that those people were quite off the mark. To be a snotty little erudite snob for just a moment, I'm going to discuss something that most bloggers don't know. It's something many people in the corporate world don't know, either. Really, it's a bit of knowledge that is only relevant to people who decide they want to live a creative life that's exposed to the public.

What I'm talking about is persona.

The concept of having a persona is one of the things that separates most bloggers from people one would actually consider writers. Bloggers choose to use the medium to deliver information. Spelling isn't terribly important. Phrasing doesn't matter. Style is something almost none consider. Blogging is about the medium and about playing the ass-kissing "Oh, please, link to me" game.

I hate that game.

Someone who wants to write, on the other hand, tends to look at things a little differently.

I like to write. I love the craft. I enjoy working with style and metaphor, language and phrasing. I enjoy a nice rhythm. I just happen to be using blog software to get my messages across.

I also happen to use a persona.

For a writer, especially where non-fiction is concerned (or at least nonishly-fiction), a persona is like a mask one wears while writing. It's a second life, based on the real one the writer is leading, but slightly modified to make things more interesting, more fun, more compelling, and so on. Real life can be a little dull. Imagine telling someone about your trip to the grocery store without any embellishment. It would be as boring as the list of items to purchase you brought with you to the store.

Fact. Fact. Fact. Fact.

Yawn.

These softies, then, who thought Paul shouldn't hire me, didn't understand that most of what I write here is based on a persona. It's not a guy I've sketched out in detail. I don't have his bio sitting in a desk drawer somewhere, listing his favorite ice-cream flavor, his favorite color, or any other qualities one might think of when creating a character sketch.

My persona is just a slightly less inhibited version of myself. It really is me, but it's also a choice - it's a thing I can switch on and off. And that's what the anti-Rory softies didn't understand.

The position I was to take was going to put me in front of thousands and thousands of Microsoft customers. Sometimes I would be in a room with them, and sometimes I'd just contact them through the web. Either way, there would be no buffer between me and the hordes of developers to whom I was to be speaking.

One of the things that makes Paul a unique and valuable manager is that he can see things like persona. I don't know if he consciously knew that I present myself as a bit of a bastard online, but I suspect that he "got it" even though he didn't articulate it to himself. In other words, he knew I was trustworthy - that I could play nicely in front of customers and refrain from engaging them in the voice of my web personality.

And here we are. Or, actually, here I am. Two and a half years into the let's-see-if-we-can-take-this-creative-nut-and-put-him-in-a-corporate-position-without-driving-him-crazy-and-without-him-driving-us-crazy experiment. I like to think the experiment is turning out well. Certainly much better than my detractors ever would have thought.

A year into my job, I started to write a post. It was titled, "One Year at Microsoft - Some Thoughts." I got about five thousand words into it and realized I wasn't even half done. I had barely gotten started. There was just too much to tell. Even if I were to drop my usual storyteller mode and deliver just my impressions in the form of a list, it would have gone on for pages and pages. In the end, I gave up. The post is still sitting on my hard drive. And there it shall sit for the rest of eternity.

A couple months after I started that post, Paul told me during a conversation we were having over the phone that he was strongly considering taking a job in England. He worked there at some time in the past, and he wanted to go back. I couldn't blame him, as I loved the time I spent living in England as well. To this day, I can't imagine a better city in which to live than London.

Not much later, Paul took the job and left. When that happened, there was a major restructuring of my team. Managers were swapped out, our general manager (the person who watches over our division) took a job at Microsoft in Japan, and our VP was replaced with a guy from IBM.

It was a whole new world, and my only ally had moved on.

Paul protected me. He hired me for my "out of the box" thinking, and wanted to make it possible for me to go wild and try every crazy idea I could to reach out to customers. I like to think we worked well together. He was the conservative manager, and I was the insane employee. We complemented each other. It was great. And, when other people in the company wanted me fired for whatever stunt I had pulled some week or another, Paul sheltered me. Nothing got through. He kept me free to do my work, and the results were rather impressive. I won't detail any numbers here, but it's safe to say I gave Microsoft much more than they expected.

When Paul left, though, there wasn't anyone immediately available to take his place. I was suddenly managerless, and it was then that I realized just how much Paul had done for me. Looking back, he was an amazing guy. Like I said, he was conservative, but he also had the two best qualities anyone in his position could: An open mind combined with a healthy skepticism. He happily listened to whatever ideas I threw his way, but he questioned everything, and only allowed the good ideas through.

Without Paul, I was untethered. And, because of the distributed nature of the team (we were spread out across the US), I felt out of touch.

About four months went by like that. I did my job as well as I could, but I no longer had a partner. Nobody to protect and shield me from the red tape that straps creative people down at every corporation in the world. Even worse, I started to get the idea that a lot of people on the team actually didn't like me. And, even worse than that, my suspicions were confirmed by a couple friends. It turned out that there were people on the team who didn't think I belonged there. That, despite my top-notch performance (we were ranked against each other, and I was regularly at, or near, the top), I wasn't a "good fit". One of the reasons, I was disgusted to learn, was that there were a few male employees who didn't care for me because they thought I was gay.

I'm quite used to people thinking that. The well dressed guy in the corner wearing a fine fragrance very well could be gay.

Of course, that's no reason to dislike the guy. At least not for me. For them, it meant fear that they might have to room with me during one of our team's quarterly meetings. We met in person every several months, usually in Vegas or Texas, and we sometimes had to share hotel rooms because of budgetary reasons.

Can you imagine how awful it would have been to have roomed with me? The guy who might be gay? I mean, a gay guy. If he's willing to possibly be gay, then what kind of morals could he possibly have? Will he come onto me? Will he try to sleep with me? Will he take off his shirt to reveal a shaved chest and stuffed brassiere?

The horror.

Those were not ideal conditions. I continued to do my work, but I noticed more and more that some employees (you know who you are) treated me with what I will euphemistically call a "confrontational tolerance". They didn't want me there, but had to accept me. Gay or not, I was a colleague.

After a few months of that, though, it got old. Comments were being made about my homosexuality (which doesn't exist, mind you). People I had never worked with were telling their managers that I was a bad employee - that I didn't "do anything" (a ridiculous charge considering I was rated at the top of my team in terms of performance). It got to the point that I had to spend more time defending myself against baseless accusations than I did doing my actual job.

That sucks.

And that's when I started looking for something else. I loved getting to fly around the country and give talks to audiences. It was challenging. I regularly woke up in towns that were entirely foreign to me, and all the things I took for granted at home - food, shelter, etc. - were things I had to work to find. It forced my brain open. I felt alive. But that feeling gradually dissipated as I heard more and more about what people were saying about me.

It was time to go. Really time to go. I had a few friends, but it seemed like, with Paul out of the picture, the anti-Rory sentiments were increasing. I honestly had no idea why, other than that I had heard from a few different sources that the sexuality thing was an issue. On top of that, my new manager and I simply didn't get along. This isn't to say that he's a bad guy or that I'm a bad employee - it's just that, sometimes in life, you meet people with whom you are so incompatible that accord can only be reached as the result of long and unpleasant negotiations packed with compromises. That sort of thing is fine every once in a while, but when that's the way you and your manager communicate, it's a strong hint that things aren't going to turn out well.

And they didn't. Just before coming to Channel 9, I seriously considered leaving Microsoft. I looked online to find out what I could sell my car for. I called Ameritrade and asked what I'd have to do to pull money out of my retirement account in the event that I had to live on it. I wondered about whose couch I could sleep on until I found another gig.

That's the point I was at. I was basically ready to give everything up, go homeless, and spend the rest of my life sleeping on a park bench, spending my days spare changing, getting drunk on canned heat.

Then Jeff called.

Scoble had recently left Channel 9, and they needed someone to come along and fill the position, if not his shoes.

Jeff called me "brother" when we spoke. "Hey, brother," was his way of starting a phone conversation. Hearing those words started the process of undoing my dream of being a barnacle on the boat of society (hey - I'm running out of metaphors - give me a break). Before the conversation had gone anywhere, he was already treating me like a human being.

It was nice. I got all glow-y.

Channel 9, as many, but not all, of you know, is probably one of the stranger Microsoft products. It's a team of all the weirdoes and rebels who didn't fit in anywhere else. I think of it as the Mad Max version of Microsoft. Jeff thinks of it as Microsoft 2.0. I think he's right.

Meeting the team proved to me that Jeff wasn't the only respectful, kind, intelligent person around. Everybody here is like that. It's almost as though Jeff has intentionally put together a team of good, talented people. I know it's unheard of, but he did it.

My partner in content creation is Charles Torre. He's a tall, olive skinned man. Very handsome. Debonair.

(OK - maybe it's not so difficult to see why people thought I was gay. But whatever. I know a good looking person when I see one - it's possible to find the pleasant things in a man's face without being attracted to him.)

He speaks his mind. He believes in what he's doing. He works his ass off, and he gave me a lot of his time in the beginning, showing me how the whole show worked.

There are so many great people on the team, actually, that I'd have to write a post on each to cover his or her positive attributes.

It's strange, really. Since my arrival, Jeff has treated me with the same respect he showed during the interview process. He's kind, he pays attention to what's going on, and he knows when to take things seriously. There's a time and place for being political and behaving in a professional manner, and then there's a time and place for running off to the Ms. Pac-Man arcade game we have on our floor.

A couple weeks ago, to give you an idea of what life is like on this team, I was feeling down. I had a lot of crap to deal with in my personal life (none of which I've written about), and it was getting me seriously depressed. My professional life had never been better, but my personal life was becoming almost impossible to manage.

So, what does Jeff do? He invites me over to his house on Saturday to just hang out, play video games, eat some food, and decompress. In roughly two months, these people have become my extended family. My office has become my home. I'm currently renting out a room in some guy's house. That's where I sleep - where I brush my teeth. But it's not where I live.

I come into the office on weekends. Sometimes I come in because I feel like working, and sometimes I come in just because I like it. And I'm not the only one who feels this way. It's not uncommon to show up on a Saturday or Sunday to find a teammate who's also just hanging out (or working - whatever).

We also have access to building 21. Building 21 is very important. That's because building 21 has a room with a projector in it, an Xbox 360, a bunch of controllers, and about fifty beanbags. It's awesome. There are so many ways to combat stress around here that, for the first time in years, I feel like things are actually kind of normal. Yeah, I've got my personal problems. Yeah, I've got some health issues right now. Yeah, I live in a house that's so dirty I'm afraid to let my bare feet touch the floor.

But I'm happy.

When interviewing for the position, I had to meet with many people. One of them was Steve Cellini. You might not know him, but we were introduced back when I was co-hosting .NET Rocks. On that particular episode, I was fixated on the subject of the artificial fat-replacement called "Olestra" and its tendency to cause anal leakage when eaten in large quantities. Throughout that episode, I made references to anal leakage, never even considering for a second that I might one day sit in this man's office for an interview.

It was also considered the most important interview of the day. Steve is the general manager of this org, and that's a pretty big deal. So, I was a little surprised when I entered his office, not remembering that I had interviewed him, to see that he had a devilish little smile on his face.

I sat down. He looked at me. He clasped his hands together behind his head, slowly peered up at the ceiling, and then waited what I am sure was the scientifically correct amount of time for such a pause, and then, totally deadpan, said, "So... anal... leakage."

I was stunned. Everything came back to me. The interview, the leakage, the strangeness of it all. And this was a guy who could make or break my chances at getting the job.

Fortunately, he was just screwing with my head. We briefly discussed anal leakage and then moved on. At one point, I said, "If I don't get this job, then I'm going to leave Microsoft and become a Starbucks barista. That's how badly I want it."

I was serious. Except for the barista part. My plan, as I noted earlier, was to become homeless. I just wanted it to look like I had a good work ethic. Quitting to work for Starbucks, even though it doesn't pay much, is at least a job. Being homeless, on the other hand, is most likely not something one would describe as a vocation.

Now I'm here. Editing video on a new Dell XPS. Even the story of getting the laptop is amazing.

Get this - Jeff asked me what kind of laptop I needed. I told him. And then I got it.

It was that simple.

In the past, it seemed like there was a strange management rule in place which dictated that an employee should always receive only a fraction of what he requests. This is, of course, because employees are just bent on sucking money out of the corporation with their lazy, drug-abusing selves (between the mistrust and drug tests in many corporations, I think this is the message we're supposed to be receiving).

You know how it goes. You need a good dev box, and you describe your needs. A couple weeks later, you get exactly what you asked for, but with half the RAM, a 5400 RPM hard drive, a lesser video card, and no second monitor. It's like you're being punished because you asked for the equipment you needed to get your work done. The shame.

Not so here.

Simply put, this is another dream job. My last job began as a dream job, but slowly turned into a nightmare.

I'm really hoping the same thing doesn't happen here.