- Andrew and Mark Ansell are former Microsoft interns who also worked at Apple and Tesla.
- They say Microsoft has one of the best work cultures and that they really enjoyed their time there.
- This is their story, as told to reporter Jenna Gyimesi.
The as-told-to essay is based on a conversation with Mark and Andrew Ansell, former Microsoft employees. It has been edited for length and clarity.
Mark was a product management intern for the Surface department in the summers of 2018 and 2019. Andrew was a product management intern on the Surface team in the summer of 2019.
For our internships, we worked in-person in Seattle, then both moved on to full-time roles as lead product managers at Microsoft.
A Microsoft recruiter actually reached out to Mark on LinkedIn in 2018 and he applied online. One summer later, Andrew applied online too.
We already had a decent amount of experience before we interned at Microsoft: Mark had interned for companies like Apple, and Andrew with Apple and Tesla. We were able to get our first few internships with campus resources at UC Berkeley College of Engineering.
We learned that we should try to avoid three things at Microsoft while we were interns:
- Try not to get too caught up in the fun and forget to work.
- Don’t take on extra assignments that you don’t fully understand without asking for help.
- Don’t put emojis in your email titles — Andrew did that once and someone told him to remove the fire emojis from his future email subjects. What Andrew thought was urgent wasn’t close to pressing to anyone else.
Let’s start with the fun things
Every year Microsoft has an intern day. One summer they brought Pitbull, and our next summer the performers were Sean Paul and Ella Mai. They keep the performers a secret beforehand so it’s a complete surprise — all you know is that it is going to be good.
There’s also tons of free food and swag on Intern Day. It’s the best day of the internship by far.
You also get swag throughout your internship. By the end of our internships we got Surface Headphones, a Surface Laptop 3, and a Surface Book. We also got an Xbox, sweaters, backpacks, wireless charging pads, Microsoft reusable water bottles, jackets, and T-shirts and socks — SO many T-shirts and socks. Honestly, we got so much stuff we can’t even remember it all.
Mark also got to go to China for about 10 days during his first internship to see how Microsoft builds its products.
It’s easy to get caught up in all of the events and fun things at Microsoft. But we were careful about not getting carried away and losing track of our projects.
We had about three intern events a week sprinkled across our calendars. Sometimes those events would be a speaker, sometimes it would be a tour of the prototyping lab — something along those lines.
We were given a lot of independence to manage our own time
Our managers were there to guide us only on the very highest level. I think they purposefully give interns a lot of independence because full-time work at Microsoft requires the same sort of self-guidance.
We felt they were evaluating our abilities to manage our time throughout the internship.We didn’t mind working on our own, but you had to be diligent about staying on track.
The internships lasted for 12 weeks. We came in around 9 a.m. and left no later than 6 p.m. As interns, we weren’t expected to work overtime or anything.
For lunch most days, Mark set up networking lunches, hangouts with full-time employees or one on one’s with his manager. Andrew didn’t — he usually had free lunches and enjoyed the complimentary food. He probably got lunch with his manager the first day and that was it.
You have to take initiative to invite people for lunchtime meetings if you want to have them, but you don’t need to do that.
Interns work on one main project in addition to helping with whatever their team needs
In each of our Microsoft internships, there were two elements:
- A main project that was to be completed by the end of the summer (and one that added value to the team)
- A contribution to the day-to-day work the team was doing
We really liked that mix because it made us feel valuable and gave us ownership over a piece of work, but also made us feel integrated into the team.
You don’t necessarily get to pick your special project, but we spoke with our manager to make sure it was something we were interested in. Mark was given two options: he could either work on the very beginning of a new product or on a product that was going to ship out in a few months. He chose to work on the one that was going to ship soon because he wanted to see it go out the door.
Team members will invite you to work on other projects you may be interested in, but you have to be careful. You don’t want to take on other things at the expense of your project because Microsoft ultimately hired you to work on one specific thing.
You get a manager, a mentor, and a buddy
A manager has multiple people reporting to them. They may oversee mechanical engineering PM’s, electrical engineering PM’s, and so on. Managers also have a higher level view of how you’re doing and how you fit into the team’s goals. Ultimately, your manager is the one who evaluates you and if you will convert to full-time employment.
A mentor is someone that helps you with day-to-day things. For example, if you’re stuck on a product, you can ask your mentor, but you wouldn’t go to your manager for something like that.
A buddy is someone who is traditionally younger than your manager and mentor. It’s usually someone who already went through the internship program and converted to full-time. They talk to you about how your job is going and they can answer questions about how Microsoft works.
You’re automatically matched up with these people, but it would have been nice to have another more informal mentor. We weren’t sure who was evaluating us or who had input, so we would have felt more comfortable asking questions to a true mentor who didn’t report back to anyone. We felt like anyone involved in your business unit or in your projects has a bit of a conflict of interest.
Andrew was actually able to meet a woman who had gone from intern to full-time project manager a few years ago. They met in the cafeteria getting lunch and she became his informal mentor. We would really recommend interns look for something like that. But in Andrew’s case, it was just really lucky and accidental.
We noticed that high-performing interns weren’t necessarily the ones with the best technical skills
You would think that Microsoft would value technical skills above all else, but over time we realized that teamworking skills were so much more important.
Being a successful intern was about way more than just getting your work done. We felt like Microsoft looked at how you interacted with your coworkers, how they felt working with you, and if you communicated well. There is so much collaboration that has to happen when you work at Microsoft that you really need to be a good listener. Those soft skills were so overrated. There were definitely interns who did not get return offers because they weren’t friendly or were bad communicators.
We also advise any future interns to clearly understand your manager’s expectations of you and ask them what success looks like on particular projects. Otherwise, you may be working on the wrong things. You don’t want to accidentally go down the wrong path and deliver something the manager wasn’t expecting. As we’ve said, Microsoft hired you to do a certain thing so make sure you understand your role on the team.
Our internships were definitely challenging, but the pressure wasn’t overwhelming
It was honestly a lot of fun to help on the product development side of things. It was really easy to ask questions, and people were friendly. Even if someone is much higher than you, they’re never going to reject you if you ask to do short one-on-one conversations.
We reached out to so many people that were way above our levels, and we heard that that’s not the case at every tech company.
There was some pressure and nervousness because working there was new to us, but the pressure we felt came from our personal expectations for ourselves rather than pressure from Microsoft.
After our internships, we both received full-time return offers. We didn’t hesitate to accept the offers because we really liked our experiences.
Microsoft truly has one of the best work cultures in our experience and we recommend the company to anyone.
Our overarching advice on how to be successful and get the most out of your internship is to show up on time and prepare for every meeting you have. Understand your project and expectations, and be the glue! Microsoft loves people who can bring a team together and raise the energy. Don’t be afraid to be excited.
If you’d like to share your experience working at a tech company, email Jenna Gyimesi at [email protected].
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