Microsoft — 12 months later.

Sahil Jhamb
Jul 27, 2017 · 9 min read

Before I started my internship, I was asked to deliver a talk at my old school to let the up coming students know about my internship with Microsoft. They asked me what I was going to be doing, and at the time, my answers were vague and generic as A) I had a predisposition to the title “intern” and assumed it revolved solely around teas and coffees and B) I was still unsure as to what value I could offer these students at that point in time. Nevertheless, I drew upon my trajectory up until that point, recounting why I felt Microsoft offered me the role.

A year later, given the chance to go back and speak to them, I would basically say everything that I essentially brain-dumped below….
As I began thinking about what I would write, my mind shifted to the numerous conversations I had with different Microsoft employees I had come to know throughout the course of the internship. of the myriad discussions, I was fortunate to have, the importance of being able to reflect one’s development came up on different occasions. I have, and always will be, my greatest critic. Yet, the thought of throwing my self-criticisms down on to paper seemed incredulous at best and only served to perpetuate the vicious cycle of self-doubt that had manifested during college and University through a culmination of failed pursuits, detractors and the discovery of my physical and mental limitations……

That would have been my response coming into Microsoft. But, 12 months on, reflection isn’t about reminding myself of my shortcomings, but simply a log of myself, my thoughts and my drive at a point in time. Yes, areas for improvement form the basis of any reflective piece of text. But, the process of coming to these realisations and identifying my strengths and faults is just as important. Mapping the process, therefore, is what reflection, in my opinion, is about.

You can’t fake passion.

I remember my assessment centre vividly. I had prepared resources, memorised different products and their benefits and, most importantly, visualised myself working at the very same company that Bill Gates and Paul Allen started 42 years ago.

Every time I was asked, “Why Microsoft”? I was honest. It was an assessment centre, where being genuine actually paid off. I loved technology, I had a latent passion for storytelling and, I had a drive that was really hard to suppress. I wanted to change the world. Working for a company that has a mission statement of empowering every person and organisation on this planet to achieve more is a statement so grandiose that it did nothing but energise me. It was something I could commit to.
Luckily, my line manager and my future colleague forgave (or embraced?) my clear eccentricities and offered me the chance to come and work in the Windows business group in the UK. Thanks again, Rob and Ian :)

Throughout the year, I worked alongside ridiculously talented and hard working people on different projects. From working on below-the-line campaigns like #UndertheKeys to engaging with Microsoft fans across the UK, I had the chance to work and play on lovely products like the Surface family and even have a crack at building the Creators Club thanks to the social media team. We supported OEM partners at events like Future Decoded, BETT, Insomnia, ESL and even Comic-Con and, I had a chance to re-kindle my childhood obsession in storytelling through video….

Fortunate to have met the founders of MnM gaming. Big future ahead for these two i’m sure. I also was clearly working hard at Insomnia58….

I created content, learnt about business and digital marketing strategy, and developed my transferrable skills in the process.

Waking up 5am every morning to come into work wasn’t a struggle at all.

I let Tom Phillips down, numerous times….

The willingness to admit ignorance.

I’m taking some notes here from Yaval Noah Harrari’s breathtaking book — Sapiens at this point. When introducing how we entered the scientific revolution, he noted that modern science differs from the previous assumptions of knowledge accrued from the cognitive revolution.
Modern science accepts ignorance and acknowledges that as we acquire more knowledge, the things that we think we know might be proven wrong. No concept, idea, or theory is sacred and beyond challenge.

I see that applies perfectly here. And, being the intern, I was more than happy to admit ignorance time and time again. It’s from doing this, was I able to ask questions without fear of being reprimanded or silently judged. If I was judged, I didn’t see or feel it. In fact, I attribute the best and frankly, absurdist moments of my internship directly coming from asking questions where others wouldn’t or taking risks where I really shouldn’t.

Creators update launch featuring a dinosaur…. Seems legit.

One example; I was aligned to consumer marketing, yet, having the Hololen’s land on my desk and experiencing what mixed reality was capable of, I was determined to spend more time with it. To do that though, I needed to learn and accept that I didn’t know enough about the product or its intended audience — I accepted ignorance in this field but I didn’t accept that this would persist. I proceeded to read the decks, learn from Steve Beswick (lead for business development at Microsoft) and wait for the right opportunity to practice talking about the Hololens.

I had the chance to present to the BAME students visiting Microsoft around the Hololens and used this as a springboard to get myself opportunities to present to education customers in Oxford and Cardiff, respectively.

It was awesome.

On teamwork, leadership and having mentors.

People come and go. This is true for the members of our work place and is also true for different aspects of life. Though departures do have their degree of melancholy, I’ve seen how members of the Windows team and the Social Media team choose to honour the past but being careful not to dwell in it. My line manager diffused this ethos down to me and it struck a chord as I saw how each personality seemed to compliment one another. And it made sense; We spend a large proportion of our lives in work. So, the people that we spend it with might as well be people that we can get along with. No doubt this was something my hiring managers looked for during the assessment centre. It’s reassuring to know that my manager saw a place in his team for me.

This was a trend that I saw consistent across the marketing & operations division at Microsoft and it’s clear that in this sort of environment, a team-first ethos is the most under-appreciated skill picked upon in this workplace. It gets chiselled into us.

I’ve worked in teams and I’ve led teams in different outings (MyIndia), but, before Microsoft, I wasn’t a good leader (Still have ways to go). At university, I was guilty of being myopic. Not being able to have a clear long term vision of what I wanted to achieve with the ventures I was a part of. This myopia consequently diffused down to poor decision making and an inability to admit that I didn’t know what I was doing. Now, I’ve begun to see things through Alistair Campbell’s lens of OST — Objective, Strategy, tactics. Working in a team that helps drive strategy across the business has ingrained this into my being and I can’t help but view every idea through this framework.

The elements of risk-taking I mentioned above could only have been made possible had I felt that my manager and my team were comfortable with the decisions and actions proposed and that’s something that can’t be left out — being in an environment in which I could thrive.

The legendary Windows BG — Class of FY17
At the Microsoft Studio Spaces event with Adobe. We were celebrating the launch of the new Surface devices!

The relationships formed outside of my team were equally as impactful. I think the advantage of being overly excited in the early stages of working at the company, is that I wanted to speak to as many people as possible to understand what they did and what motivated them to keep working at Microsoft, especially those that had been there for 10+ years. One of the things that came to fruition was that I had begun to meet really interesting people. Some, even (willingly) offered their time to help me on my personal development and as a result, ended up mentoring along the way (Thanks, Jodi). Getting different perspectives is useful.

I didn’t see the total sum of myself in any one individual at Microsoft, but, I saw fragments that resonated with myself in different people. Stapling it together, I felt that I was getting the amalgamation of the person I wanted to be.

And that makes sense for me. I maintain that same ethos for my role models. During A-Levels, I looked up to Steve Jobs’s self-belief and “no compromising” mindset to block out external distractions during periods of intense revision. Muhammed Ali’s quotes and Michael Phelps’s dedication to a sport spurred me during my training and subsequent marathon. And, to Elon Musk, who’s committed to goals so ambitious (wants to colonise Mars) that it made me wonder why I can’t set an overarching objective for my life — and commit to it. I might not change the world, but the process, the actions I take to get there will hopefully lead to results that I wouldn’t have attained had I settled for something smaller. Setting this life goal, I still believe, was the major influencing factor in getting to Microsoft in the first place.

Came in first place in the Microsoft fun run with a PB of 19:27. Only got it because I wanted to test myself against a real ironMan, Mark Holmes.

Failure and taking risks

I’ve listed all my failures down in my personal OneNote and the actions i’ve taken since then to prevent them from happening again, or the learnings that I can carry forward. looking back at these, it was clear that I made a lot of mistakes and failed on numerous occasions. But, being able to quickly accept it, and not get plagued down by each setback was a definite progression point for me this year.

I’m comfortable with this as the amount of opportunities created, people i’ve developed close relationships with and the things i’ve learnt I can directly attribute to my genuine willingness to take risk. To take risk though, means being able to take responsibility for when things don’t turn out the right way and even by the end of my internship, I was far from perfect. My commitment to the 101 teams at Microsoft could have been greater and I should have focused on delivering a better on-boarding experience for the new intern coming into my role amongst other things. It was clear therefore, that even at the end of my internship, I was still learning.

On reflections

Looking back in a few years, I will see this a critical juncture in my development. This year was critical in two ways. First, it solidified my drive towards working in technology and marketing and secondly, through seeing what happens at Microsoft and the people I had a chance to learn from and interact with, it reiterated to me that I can’t substitute hard work. Passion gets your foot in the door, but a concoction of the latter, alongside continuous learning and a willingness to admit ignorance, will continue to be a key differentiator, whether it be at Microsoft or any career pathway I might go down.

I’m going to be shadowing a marketing agency for two weeks in August, before heading back to Loughborough university where the chancellor is an Olympic gold medalist, I’ll be surrounded by students who compete at international level in their respective sports alongside their studies and working alongside friends and entrepreneurs far smarter than me but equally driven in leaving an impact.

This, therefore, is the perfect environment to continue to improve me, both physically and mentally after Microsoft.

From one intern to the next.

Sahil Jhamb

Written by

I’m someone who never gives up.

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