Why I’m moving on from Microsoft

I think most people who know me personally by now know that I’m very shortly moving on from Microsoft to pastures new. For everyone else, I thought I should briefly explain what’s going on and what I’ll be doing next.

Basically the reason I’m leaving is that the Bing Commerce team I worked on wanted to consolidate all the team in Bellevue in the USA, and so asked me whether we wanted to move out to live in Washington State. After much deliberation we decided it wasn’t the right time to move halfway around the world, so that meant my current position was now redundant and hence I’ll be leaving the company around the end of November.

Microsoft has been a great company to work for, and I’ve had the pleasure of working with some truly inspirational people. In particular in the last few years when working for teams mostly based in the US, I’ve had some great managers who’ve been flexible enough to allow me to work productively from the UK and find an arrangement that worked well for everyone. However, circumstances always change – particularly in big corporations like Microsoft when re-organisations are commonplace – and so it’s a good time for me to start doing something new.

I’m currently in the process of starting up a new software development company called Brave Location. I’m still figuring out exactly how things are going to work, but almost certainly it’ll be something to do around the things I’ve written about on here – enterprise scale web development, location-based services and mobile development.

John

Update (10/10/2010) : My time away from Microsoft didn't last long - see my post at https://blogs.msdn.com/b/john_pollard/archive/2010/10/10/back-at-microsoft-what-i-m-doing-now.aspx for more details on what I'm doing now

Comments

• Anonymous
  November 16, 2009
  Good Luck with your new company. Hope it all goes well for you

• Anonymous
  November 20, 2009
  Good luck and good for you for making a rational (if difficult) decision. About 2 years ago I had the opportunity to work at Microsoft and although I was extremely excited at the idea, the fact is it was during the peak of the housing bubble and I couldn't fathom the idea of spending half a million on a house that would cost me half that in NJ even in a good economy. Last year I bought a big house in NJ at a rock bottom price and I have a secure and well paying job. It's not Microsoft but I think my hesitation made all the difference between me being a good provider for my family and a miserable developer stressing out to make ends meet and trying to keep my wife from leaving me. Good luck!

• Anonymous
  November 20, 2009
  Steven and Josh, Thanks very much for your comments - much appreciated! John