An abrupt (but delightful) change...

Now that things have been set in motion and all the pertinent people have been informed, I can make a more public announcement than even Facebook allows.

I am leaving my job at Advanti at the end of the month for a job at Microsoft.

Wow. It's an overwhelming thing to say. The words are full of emotions - joy, trepidation, excitement, guilt, worry, anticipation, and many others.

Here's what happened. Last month, I was contacted by a Microsoft Talent Scout, who had seen my profile on LinkedIn and thought I would be a good fit for one of his positions. It was really sudden, and there was no prompting on my end - he just called me out of the blue. In fact, I was so sure that it couldn't be a job opportunity that I thought he was some sort of vendor from Microsoft, who may have gotten my number instead of my boss's by accident. But no. He was looking for me, and he wanted to get me on the phone with the hiring manager for the position.

My phone interview was the next day. It was nerve-wracking. I brushed up on some topics I hadn't looked at in a while but thought might be asked about. I fretted. I worried that my phone wouldn't receive the call, or that it would drop halfway through. I wondered what the hiring manager was like. But my worries were for naught, because the interview went well. It was partially technical, partially just information exchange, and a little joking about whether I would have my iPhone thrown out the window upon arrival. The conclusion? The hiring manager wanted to bring me in for an on-site interview.

I was thrilled, but I was scared, too. I am 23, with less experience than their other candidates. It was impossible to think of myself as "Microsoft material". Even though Ben kept repeating, "THEY called YOU!" over and over again.

So I studied some more. And I worried some more. And I fretted over my outfit, and my resume, and trying to remember lots of obscure code I hadn't written in months or all the logic puzzles and life experiences they would inevitably ask me about. I talked to Mike, my old boss from Omgeo, who always makes me feel better about my abilities. It was two weeks between my phone interview and my in-person interview, so I had lots of time to concern myself. I'm surprised I didn't give myself a brain aneurysm.

And then the day came. "Reserve the whole day" my scheduler (yes, the person who was strictly in-charge of scheduling my interview) told me. So I got dressed up in a nice turtleneck and skirt and heels. And I pulled out a nice leather folder to hold my resume. And I hopped on the train to Kendall Square, where I used to work doing contracts at Perseus Books and hadn't been to in years, feeling oddly calm.

I won't say much about the interviews themselves here. I met with my Talent Scout, who is genuinely awesome, and he went over all the important points about the day with me. Mainly, that the longer I'm there and the more people I meet with that day, the better the interview is going. If I'm out by lunch, it's probably a bad sign. I met with seven people. They asked me lots of technical questions about databases, SQL, testing, project management, coding, and also asked me a lot about my experiences. It was a pretty standard set of computer science interviews, actually, except that there were more of them and they were more rigorous than I had been through before. And Microsoft had the good grace to provide lunch, which was very nice of them.

I didn't leave until almost 4pm, thinking that I had done passably well, but that I probably hadn't blown people away. It was my hardest interview ever, but I was pretty sure I hadn't made a fool of myself. And that alone satisfied me, because, regardless if I got a job, Microsoft had called me and I had done all right at an interview. This could only mean good things for the future, right?

So then came the waiting. They had other candidates to interview. I didn't hear back until the middle of the following week. My Talent Scout sent me a vague and (to my already worried brain) very ominous-sound email, merely telling me that he "had news" and asking if I "had time to talk". And when he called me, the most joyous words came through the cell towers: they wanted to offer me the job! Wow. Crazy. I couldn't think straight. I barely got through that conversation, because all I really wanted was to go out on my balcony and scream to the whole city of Quincy that I had gotten a job at one of my favorite companies in the whole world.

But instead, I politely got off the phone and went shopping. I deserved it, right? I felt oddly like I did when I got into Bennington College - suddenly blasé even though the best thing in the world had just happened to me. I did all the important things - signed the offer letter, gave notice to Advanti (who took it very well, even though I really like Advanti and feel very bad about leaving), submitted all the paperwork, etc. Pending a successful background check and all that (yeah, 'cause I'm such a little troublemaker and miscreant), I will be starting at Microsoft on April 4th.

I'll be working at their New England Research and Development Center (NERD Center, haha) in Cambridge, MA, in their TV and Video Advertising department. I will be helping to do testing and development on products which help people more accurately and efficiently place television ads. I can't tell you what an improvement that is over finance. I hate finance, from the very bottom of my heart. I know more about the stock market, asset and private wealth management, hedge funds, etc., than I ever really wanted to know.

There are many benefits to moving over to Microsoft, and I'm extremely happy to be given this opportunity. I will be sad to leave Advanti, because I think what Advanti does is pivotal and important to finance and I think the people there are truly extremely talented, but I'm very happy to be starting a new adventure. I'm 100% certain that I would not be in such a good position right now if not for Advanti and Omgeo. I'm pretty excited and pretty terrified right about now.