Author: M3 Sweatt

Leaving Microsoft: Reflections on an Unexpected Experience

Post author By M3 Sweatt
Post date 10/03/2023

Courtesy Microsoft 365 Stock Photography

Prologue: While I had intended this week’s post to share more on my own retirement from Microsoft, but recent events overshadowed such thoughts: I’ll revisit that topic once I’ve processed and settled. Sharing some small part of James Whittaker’s views on eschewing an ego bully pulpit given so many are impacted by layoffs and unexpected restructuring, I thought instead to share my views on the employee experience along with another 688 employees impacted by a layoff (née, RIF) this week in Washington, others around the world, and many more that will add up to the 10,000. That’s a number that comes up a couple of times in this post. To paraphrase a more accomplished author, this is a much shorter story of an adventure, and finding that you’ve done and said things altogether unexpected.

Microsoft’s mission is to empower every person and every organization on the planet to achieve more.

Come May, they’ll be doing this without me, when (given the latest staffing actions and impacts) I will retire from the company where I’ve spent the last 22 years (just about 2/3 of my career), somewhere around 1,144 of my own Four Thousand Weeks. To put that into a Frank X. Shaw “By the Numbers” context, that’s on average a little more than 50,000 hours… or maybe closer to 60K than I care to admit or consider. And while Malcolm Gladwell estimated (in his book Outliers) that it takes 10,000 hours for a person to become an expert in something (committing the time practicing or studying something), I’m far from being an expert. (Side note: If you’ve not read Outliers: The Story of Success, Gladwell lays out explanations for the various factors that lead to mastery in a series of case studies. It’s a good read.)

I do agree with Gladwell success is not realized through determination and hard work (you’ll find a favourite quote from Thomas Edison on that topic in many of the PowerPoints and papers I’ll leave behind internally for those in Redmond), but more thanks to one’s luck, timing, and opportunities. All of which I’ve had at the company, through the support and grace of others.

“Opportunity is missed by most people because it is dressed in overalls and looks like work.”

It’s been exciting to represent the unabashed, impartial, unvarnished voice of our customers and partners (supported by data and analysis) at the company for several years, and to help identify and drive CX improvements across a wide spectrum of initiatives, all in an effort to ensure that our customers are successful in achieving their goals with Microsoft. I now leave the work to others to manage the company’s worldwide customer and partner experience strategy, and I can’t help but say how much I will miss working with many employees and leaders across the teams and divisions at the company.

But overshadowing these thoughts this past week has been the needed and important time (Nee, critical) spent assisting others recently laid off in the latest round of worldwide cuts. A lot has been said of how employees are a company’s best and most important asset. Each experience is different: a measure of people and a company is how individuals and teams are treated at their lowest, providing empathy, clarity, and transparency. As Satya Nadella framed it in his email outlining the 10,000 job cuts at Microsoft (shared by many news outlets)…

“…we will treat our people with dignity and respect, and act transparently. These decisions are difficult, but necessary. They are especially difficult because they impact people and people’s lives – our colleagues and friends. We are committed to ensuring all those whose roles are eliminated have our full support during these transitions.”

There’s real pain and anguish created by the impacts of several layoff waves that have been covered in the news over the last couple of months, and I’ll leave others to comment on whether or not this goal was achieved. IMHO, while we pay close attention to the overall employee experience, but there is still much to do, to promote, build, and develop a corporate a growth mindset in the industry at large. And the charge for companies, leaders, managers, and individual employees can make these experiences better for those affected. Brad Smith wrote a few years ago something heard time and time again from leaders at many companies (emphasis mine)…

“… we pride ourselves on our products and services, our brand, and our global reach. But unquestionably, our employees are our greatest asset.”

This drives home the importance of providing an inclusive and supportive atmosphere that enables people to do their best work, throughout all phases of their career lifecycle – not just on hire and in the thick of a career, but at the end when that support is needed most. (FTR, I know a little about Microsoft’s Lifecycle work, tho’ our incredible core Lifecycle team with our partners in engineering, marketing, field, and operating roles across the company are the true experts.) And so, at a time when some people’s current step in their career is interrupted (or worse), we all do our best to provide that support as much as we can for those impacted folks, and do whatever we can to ensure that they’re landing as well as they are able while making the step into this ambiguous and often poorly illustrated world.

“You can easily judge the character of a man by how he treats those who can do nothing for him.” – Malcolm S. Forbes / Paul Eldridge

As much as we try to make a formal separation between work and life, I’ve we realized that actually it’s a semi permeable layer between the two: the relationships we form, the connections that we make, and the people that we know and work with – and trust – every day. In my case, it’s been the role to advocate on the behalf of customers and partners and ensure that we’re doing the right things that when we’re successful, accrues to business results as well as customer satisfaction.

Regardless of how many times you’re exposed to layoffs (I’ve been through my share), I still find it difficult to find the words when these things occur. This past week (much as like many other past weeks and months), I greatly appreciated the opportunity to talk with as many people as I can, as it’s not only helpful to them, but personally cathartic and helps me stay sane. While these notifications are unfortunate and unexpected, it’s not a reflection of their work or value, what they did or didn’t do.

The people affected by these decisions are some amazing people, all with the goal to make our customers and partners successful. Collectively, I admire their dedication, creativity, and professionalism, and the lasting impact they have made on Microsoft. Their dedication, passion, and talent have made the work meaningful.

It’s been a pleasure to work with so many amazing people and teams over those hours, days, weeks, and years. By my estimate, in those hours I’m sure that my connections have been with more people than I can count, and just by virtue of the math and different estimates that the average person will meet and influence 10,000 people in their lifetime, I feel that I’ve certainly come close to that number at Microsoft if not exceeded it. Aaron Schnoor posted at the start of the pandemic that you’ll likely have 10,000 chances to influence:

“You’ve got 10,000 chances in life. 10,000 people to meet. What’s stopping you from changing their lives?”

I shared with my teams this week that often, the smallest things make the biggest impact, and reminded of an old parable: when you put your hand into a swimming pool, you don’t see the level of the pool rise; similarly, when you remove your hand, the pool’s level does not perceptibly change. This can be the ebb and flow of the people and teams we work with throughout our careers.

But given the impact many of these people have had in an ocean of customer and partner experiences at Microsoft, to me the level of water has visibly dropped.

For those I know and have had the pleasure to work on behalf of our customers and partners, speak truth to power, and make a difference, thank you for your support, and I wish you all the best in the next steps in your careers.

#career #advice #EX #Microsoft #10000hours #4000weeks #layoffs #impact #growthmindset

(Also shared on LinkedIn)

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Your questions: It’s time to “Fall Back” again in North America. What’s the point of DST?

Post author By M3 Sweatt
Post date 04/11/2018

Late tonight in much of North America, people will turn their clocks back an hour as Daylight Saving Time ends in 2018.

Today on Twitter, I saw a great question from Ken, quoting the Seattle Times reprinted article by Frank Kummer on the point of Daylight Saving Time:

IMHO, it’s all about the economics and politics.

Mr. Kummer notes that 84 percent of European citizens were in favor of doing away with it, but that there’s no similar movement in the U.S. Well, maybe not today at the Federal level. Actually there’s plenty of activity at the State level in the States: over the last couple of years we’ve spoken with many different representatives who’ve proposed or opined on making moves for a number of different reasons.

Generally, politicians propose legislation that generally follow one of two model proposals with different supporting facts: 1) to move their state to perpetual daylight saving time, or 2) to move to permanent standard time (effectively abolishing DST). (blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/mthree/2015/02…)

States like Florida, Mississippi and New Mexico considered the former, while Alaska, Oregon, South Dakota, Texas, Utah and Washington looked at permanent standard time. On the worldwide stage, we often see similar considerations from countries and sovereign states, to perpetually embrace or abandon DST, often hitting the news this time of year for early in the spring. Some of these efforts had reasonably long lead times. Back in 2011, I wrote on the @Microsoft corporate blog about the end of daylight saving time in the Russian Federation. (blogs.microsoft.com/blog/2011/09/2…)

But like the immortal title of the famed Thunderball sequel “Never Say Never Again”, the government considered a return to seasonal or perpetual Winter Time a year later, depending upon whom you were speaking at the time. But I digress. In the States, this was last addressed at the Federal level in 2005 with the amendments to Energy Policy Act of 1992. Specifically, the changes were to the start and daylight saving time to amend the Uniform Time Act of 1966. (IIRC, some of our own folks even participated in the discussions and submissions.)

In supporting such amendments to what would become the Energy Policy Act of 2005, you can understand why lobbyists for this change would include the Foundation to @FightBlindness. But you also saw the National Association of Convenience Stores support the changes (think a lighter Halloween) joined by the Sporting Goods Manufacturers Association. (Couple those with the lobbyists from oil and gas supporting other provisions of the Act)

You can learn more in this piece by NPR, which is covered in Michael Downing’s book “Spring Forward: The Annual Madness of Daylight Saving Time.” (npr.org/templates/stor…)

So it seems that like much of the legislation we see in state and national politics, such moves to change DST are driven by business interests rather than health and goodwill. In 2006 when working on the effort in Windows and across Microsoft, I heard how candy manufacturers had long lobbied their desire to see the Halloween holiday be included in the summertime Daylight Saving Time change. Imagine: if kids were able to spend more time trick-or-treating, home bound chocolate and candy corn benefactors would need even greater stores of candy. (And this all to the often repeated call of “Halloween Apples” in my hometown, tho’ we rarely received any.)

Lobbyists against the changes in 2005 included the National PTA, and of course the Calendaring and Scheduling Consortium and the Air Transport Association. Remember a time when Airlines used to print those small voluminous books of the schedules for departure and arrival times for all their flights?

Now please pardon me while I take a break to refresh my memory and make a fresh cup of ☕️ to mull on a few topics particularly around the areas where different studies supported or detracted DST.

It’s all coming back to me, like the time we watched closely back in late 2007 as Venezuela moved to a newly created time zone, shifting by 30 minutes to -4:30h UTC (blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/mthree/2007/11…)

For some changes, the notification comes challenging late, as we saw with Morocco and Pakistan in 2008, switching from one traditionally used GMT offset to a new one. Such changes impact customers and partners in the regions who use local time zones, as well as others entities engaged in business in or with the region. (Remember those flight guides?)

Unfortunately, due to the short notice provided for these late breaking changes with short runways, companies can’t always provide updates incorporating these changes. So when Morocco admirably decoded recently to stop the “fall back” (at least in the northern hemisphere) to Daylight Saving Time, it was only decided and announced days before the country was scheduled to turn clocks back. It may save “an hour of natural light” () but it creates a maelstrom of activity around the world as people speculate on whether or not the changes will be locked perpetually. (bbc.com/news/world-afr…)

That’s why Microsoft created and published a policy in response to Daylight Saving Time and Time Zone changes around the world. (support.microsoft.com/en-us/help/228…) It includes some simple recommendations to provide, first, ample advance notice (12 months or more) before a change to DST or alignment with a particular time zone,

Second, an official confirmation of the changes, and third, a yeoman’s effort to promote the change – locally and on the worldwide stage (as often such changes have far-reaching implications). So as more and more states and countries consider such changes, these guidelines become increasingly important. (washingtonpost.com/amphtml/world/…)

In my day job, we still have regular discussions on the topic as a group of resident “time lords” keep time and our systems on track. (wired.com/story/microsof…) (Although I’d like to think of myself more in line with the sharp wit and sarcasm of the Fourth incarnation of the Doctor, I’m more in line with the Third)

Having worked across all of our product groups (originally the majority was on-premises products) for the last few years on things like DST, it‘s fitting that much of my time is now spent on how we retire many of those same products in our corporate-wide end of support efforts. We dedicated several cycles with our online services to the topic of time and date management, and you see that reflected in the increased attention to the topic across the company. So, back to the initial question: What exactly is the point of daylight saving time? The not so easy answer: It depends. The initial benefits often touted more daylight hours during the day when more people were active, provide greater energy savings, lower incidents of crime, heart attacks and crime. (Mom and apple pie sentiments)

Increasingly, it seems to gain legislative momentum when specific commercial interests see material benefits as a result of making a change.

The @PBS @NewsHour said it well, capturing the absurdity of how “opponents and supporters of daylight saving are still not sure exactly what it does.“ (pbs.org/newshour/amp/n…)

And how, a century after Congress first passed the inaugural daylight saving legislation in the States, are there still questions and debates as to why DST is still a thing. Without planning, it will continue to be challenge to track future changes in a timely fashion.

Tags DST, Your Questions

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Time zone and DST changes in Windows for Morocco and the West Bank and Gaza

Post author By M3 Sweatt
Post date 14/06/2018

As it has in previous years, Morocco is suspending its daylight saving time (DST) period for the observation of the Muslim month of Ramadan from 03:00 on Sunday, May 13, 2018, to 02:00 on Sunday, June 17, 2018, in the Gregorian calendar. Updates are also available for the West Bank and Gaza, as users can revert to “(UTC+02:00) Gaza, Hebron” after the latest updates are installed.

You can read more about the upcoming change and the related updates here.

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Daylight Saving Time Arrives Sunday in the States: Prepare to Spring Forward and lose some sleep

Post author By M3 Sweatt
Post date 10/03/2018

“If you have nothing to say, say nothing.” — Mark Twain

Twain was so smart.

I’ve returned to post after a long, self-imposed break from blogging, as so many great folks inside the company work as part of their day jobs several of the areas of interest I’ve covered on my blog. Over the last year or so, I’ve spent much of my time being more social, mostly internal to the company (and with the occasional musings on Twitter) whilst working on a smattering of things that (when successful) just work and required no extraordinary post.

TL;DR: As Douglas Adams said, I may not have gone where I intended to go, but I ended up where I needed to be. 😉

The first rule of Daylight Saving Time is that there is no Daylight Saving Time (at least, in Hawaii and a few parts of North America). And if legislators in Florida have their way, residents in the state will make a move in the opposite direction and enjoy daylight saving time year round. (As of now, Gov. Rick Scott plans to “review the bill.” One can trust that they’ve seen our policy and recommendations at http://microsoft.com/time.)

The Second rule of Daylight Saving Time is that there is only one “S” in the term “Daylight Savings Time.”

Yes, that’s right: daylight saving time (aka DST) is here once again, which means it’s time to change your clocks this Sunday, March 11, 2018 as much of the United States and Canada will “Spring Forward” on Sunday at 2:00AM.

If you’re at SXSW over the next week, please keep this change in mind. (and that time is an illusion. Lunchtime doubly so — particularly at conferences.)

What to do

If you’re a frequent visitor to the Microsoft Daylight Saving Time & Time Zone Blog you’ll note there hasn’t been much fanfare on the semi annual clock changes, apart from the out of band shifts that various countries and territories make from time to time. For Windows 10, you usually don’t have to do anything–updates automatically download and install whenever they’re available.

So what should you do to make sure that your computers are ready for the change? If you use Microsoft Update on your PC at home, chances are you’re already covered. The latest cumulative updates should already be installed on your PC. If you’re not sure, visit Microsoft Windows Update to check your PC and install important updates. At work, if an IT Pro (aka ‘hero’) manages your network, chances are good that the needed updates have already been installed on your computers and devices automagically.

Be sure visit the support web sites of any other software companies to see if you need to apply any updates – it’s not just Microsoft software that may require updates. Keep in mind that it’s not just the US and Canada that made changes to DST and time zones.

I tend to agree with Angela Chen over at the Verge in that we should do away with the transition and remain perpetually on daylight saving time. Just think of all of the train schedules that wouldn’t need to be updated, the elimination of confusing airline arrival and departure times, and even better: state and federal legislatures focusing on things of even greater importance.

Well, remember: time is a precious thing. Never waste it.

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Now available: Windows Key Shortcuts for Windows 10

Post author By M3 Sweatt
Post date 26/08/2015
2 Comments on Now available: Windows Key Shortcuts for Windows 10

(Update 20231122: you can find the list of current Windows 10 and 11 shortcuts available at Keyboard shortcuts in Windows – Microsoft Support.)

Before I go on hiatus from the blog (as I spend a lot of my free time on our internal sites in support of customers and partners, as well as occasional musings on Twitter), I’d like to share this handy guide listing the various shortcut keys available via the keyboard in Windows 10. As you’ll see, these include the Windows key shortcuts specifically, not all shortcuts involve other key modifiers (Alt and Control).

Available here as a Word document, you can find these any many more Windows 10 keyboard shortcuts online.

Desktop shortcut keys

Shortcut	Description
Windows key	Open and close the Start menu.
+1, +2, etc.	Switch to the desktop and launch the nth application in the taskbar. For example, +1 launches whichever application is first in the list, numbered from left to right.
+A	Open the action center.
+B	Highlight the notification area.
+C	Launch Cortana into listening mode.[1] Users can begin to speak to Cortana immediately.
+D	Switch between Show Desktop (hides/shows any applications and other windows) and the previous state.
+E	Switch to the desktop and launch File Explorer with the Quick Access tab displayed.
+H	Open the Share charm.
+I	Open the Settings app.
+K	Open the Connect pane to connect to wireless displays and audio devices.
+L	Lock the device and go to the Lock screen.
+M	Switch to the desktop and minimize all open windows.
+O	Lock device orientation.
+P	Open the Project pane to search and connect to external displays and projectors.
+R	Display the Run dialog box.
+S	Launch Cortana.[2] Users can begin to type a query immediately.
+T	Cycle through the apps on the taskbar.
+U	Launch the Ease of Access Center.
+V	Cycle through notifications.
+X	Open the advanced menu in the lower-left corner of the screen.
+Z	Open the app-specific command bar.
+ENTER	Launch Narrator.
+SPACEBAR	Switch input language and keyboard layout.
+TAB	Open Task view.
+,	Peek at the desktop.
+Plus Sign	Zoom in.
+Minus Sign	Zoom out.
+ESCAPE	Close Magnifier.
+LEFT ARROW	Dock the active window to the left half of the monitor.
+RIGHT ARROW	Dock the active window to the right half of the monitor.
+UP ARROW	Maximize the active window vertically and horizontally.
+DOWN ARROW	Restore or minimize the active window.
+SHIFT+UP ARROW	Maximize the active window vertically, maintaining the current width.
+SHIFT+ DOWN ARROW	Restore or minimize the active window vertically, maintaining the current width.
+SHIFT+LEFT ARROW	With multiple monitors, move the active window to the monitor on the left.
+SHIFT+RIGHT ARROW	With multiple monitors, move the active window to the monitor on the right.
+HOME	Minimize all nonactive windows; restore on second keystroke.
+PRNT SCRN	Take a picture of the screen and place it in the Computer>Pictures>Screenshots folder.
+CTRL+LEFT/RIGHT arrow	Switch to the next or previous virtual desktop.
+CTRL+D	Create a new virtual desktop.
+CTRL+F4	Close the current virtual desktop.
+?	Launch the Windows Feedback App.

[1] If Cortana is unavailable or disabled, this shortcut has no function.

[2] Cortana is only available in certain countries/regions, and some Cortana features might not be available everywhere. If Cortana is unavailable or disabled, this command opens Search.

Tags How to, of interest, reference, Windows 10