On my personal blog I have a post with what I’m doing next: I’ve joined Redfin.

It’s probably odd for me to go join a real estate tech company instead of one in the digital media space but after working in the digital media space since 2001 (prior to Microsoft I founded two music related startups) it’s time to deal with a new set of challenges. Instead of fighting the record labels and movie studios it’s time to take on challenges like the MLS system and 6% comissions.

Though of course, I’ll still blog here from time to time. I still owe you all posts on the new media discovery wizards and a post on how we screwed up the different video libraries (oops!) and of course, how could I forgot, an exposé on why I really left!

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Friday was my last day at Microsoft. How did my last week pan out? Monday I had a meeting with our group’s general manager and had a good discussion about why I was leaving and what the future looked like for both my old group and for myself. The nicest thing about leaving has been the resounding support from all levels of my management chain. We all wish things had turned out differently, but Microsoft just can’t compete with my new opportunity. Though it sounds like they’ll always have a spot for me if I decide the startup life isn’t for me.

After that meeting I sent out a note to my group with the subject ‘Leaving Microsoft’ (as a template I read through some of the Leaving Microsoft emails that ex-co-workers had sent.):

Thanks everyone for a great two and half years but the time has come for me to move on. Looking back I have learned a tremendous amount from all of you about what it takes to ship great software. I don’t think there’s any other group where I would have had the chance to ship three versions in such a short amount of time. I’m really going to miss working on such a great product, but even more I’m going to miss working with such great people.

Where am I headed? I recently accepted a program management position at Redfin, a real estate startup company in Pioneer Square. And so, this Friday is going to be my last day commuting over to the east side.
Hopefully my car can hold out for a few more bridge crossings because after Friday I’ll be able to walk to work :-).

Please keep in touch,

Matt

I return I received lots of nice emails (many of you also sent nice emails and left comments), thanks!

I then took it easy for a couple days working just a few hours. Mainly I came in to have lunch with my friends. During this time everyone jokingly referred to me as a ’short-timer’. On Wednesday I took my Aeron chair home, because I didn’t want any co-workers stealing it thinking it was an MS Asset when it wasn’t. Thursday a small group of us went out for lunch. Friday was an odd day since it was the Friday before Labor Day. So not many people were in the office. But I showed up for a an hour, formatted my notebook’s hard drive (sad that all my specific knowledge about Media Center will be lost), and met one last time with my manager who gave me my review and ‘numbers’. I learned all about the promotion and raise I would have received had I stayed; oh well :). Then several people tried to get me to work but without a notebook and the long weekend looming that just wasn’t going to happen (tip: if someone you rely on is leaving approach them before their last day). Next a few of us went off to a big BBQ in the middle of campus and I got one last look at the thousands of people all working on Windows Vista. It was quite an incredible scene. I wish I had remembered my camera but I had a lot on my mind that morning hauling back lots of the equipment loaned to me over the years.

Later that day my friends held a ‘memorial service’ for me at The Chapel (local bar) and we drank from 5pm to 1am. A great time was definitely had by all. (Thanks for the Champagne Charlie!).

It’s without a doubt that I will miss interacting with some of my old co-workers on a day to day basis. Fortunately most of us live in the same neighborhood so I’m sure we will still hang out and get in trouble when not working.

Bye Microsoft. I’ll miss you! It was a great two and half years. And thanks for letting me sign up for the beta program :).

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Some people nkow my blog better than I do. Check out Mike A’s analysis of my blogging habits over the past six months. Wow!

The other side of the story is that shortly after Christmas I moved off of working on Windows Vista fulltime and started working on a different project and so your speculation is just a little bit off :).

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Paul Thurott has been pretty honest with his feelings about Media Center’s performance in the past so it is great to see him write some postive things about interm build 5536:

Windows Media Center shows, perhaps, the biggest performance improvement of any Vista component. The application almost pops to life and, using the “Express” setup option, can be in use almost immediately. I won’t be trying to put Media Center on my family’s Media Center PC again until RC1 hits, but it’s clear that something wonderful has happened here.

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There have been a few comments asking about what’s going on with HD DVD and Media Center.

First, to clear up the confusion about 32 bit vs 64 bit playback I point you to The Windows Vista Team Blog, Clarifying Windows Vista Support of Protected HD Content in 32-bit Systems:

The real deal is that no version of Windows Vista will make a determination as to whether any given piece of content should play back or not. The individual ISV providing the playback solutions will choose whether the playback environment, including environments that use 32-bit processors, meet the performance requirements for playback of protected High Definition content.

Secondly, what’s going on with HD DVD and Media Center? I was going to be working on that but was pulled off to work on something else. In my place Peter was the program manager and has this post about our support for next gen DVD formats, HD DVD and Blu-ray application extensibility in Windows Media Center. In short, we provide the extensibility mechanisms necessary for you to drop in your own playback application and have it called from Media Center.

Thirdly, our press release from WinHEC has some info, Hardware and Software Vendors Rally Behind HD DVD at WinHEC 2006

At the conference, Microsoft reiterated that Windows Vista will be shipped with the drivers, file system and other components necessary to support HD DVD playback.

So no, I’m not quiting because HD DVDs won’t play on 32 bit systems :).

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Thanks for all the emails and comments! Maybe I shouldn’t be leaving after all :).

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I’m back from vacation and have some big news to share, September 1st is my last day at Microsoft.

Now it’s certainly been a great two and half years. I came in fresh from university knowing very little and with the help of a great team, a fun product, and a regular yearly release cycle I’ve learned what it takes to ship software at one of the world’s greatest software companies. But it’s now time for me to move on. I’m moving on for a number of reasons. For one, in the back of my mind, working at Microsoft was a two year commitment. I knew while graduating that I wasn’t yet ready to run my own company, I needed to learn more. So I could either go to grad school or get some real world experience. Being pretty tired of school, Microsoft was naturally one of the best places to learn how to ship software. Secondly and most sadly is that I was no longer, or possibly never was, performing at the level that I should have been. There are a number of reasons for this. A number of my projects in Vista got cut and then my post-Vista work was continually held up but the whims of other teams. There also isn’t the incentive system in place for me to want to break outside the ‘meets expectations’ ranks in a meaningful way and so I never would step up and really take the initiative to control my own destiny. There’s a few more reasons but I’ll save blogging about those until a later date.

To be clear, I am not leaving because Microsoft isn’t a great place (it is, I love my team and my co-workers, I’m really going to miss them but thankfully I’ve made some great life long friends. However, Microsoft is just no longer the place for me and where I am in my career), I am not leaving because Windows Vista is going to suck (it’s not we have tons of people putting their heart and soul into it and I prefer using it at home than Media Center 2005), I am not leaving because we don’t support DVB-x/feature XYZ/etc (do your homework on the size of those markets and compare them to the markets we are pursuing, then figure out what the technical effort is to enter those markets and figure out how many people we have) and I am not leaving because I’m an idiot (though it would be funny if I did).

So while there have been a lot of departures recently mine certainly won’t result in me taking a year off (like Vic Gundotra’s), the news won’t break via the blogosphere (like Robert Scoble’s), there’s no news conference planned (like Bill Gates’), and this post won’t be Dugg or TechMeme’d. But maybe it should be? What is Microsoft doing to build and retain top notch young talent at the individual contributor level? How are they moving them up the ranks? (For those in the know about what this means, I was a ‘blue chip’ candidate and in the College Select program.. Anyhow these are some great ideas for my post-Microsoft blogging).

What does this mean for this blog? (Not that this blog is anything special, I hardly pay it the attention that I should). It probably all depends on if my Media Center gets repossessed :).

Keep using MCE, it rocks!

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After blogging about tags in Media Center I got some emails and comments about how the tags work in general. Fortunately the Pix Blog has started to discuss this:

XMP is an extensible framework for embedding metadata in files that was developed by Adobe, and is the foundation for our “truth is in the file” goal. All metadata written to photos by Windows Vista will be written to XMP (always directly to the file itself, never to a ‘sidecar’ file). When reading metadata from photos on Windows Vista, we will first look for XMP metadata, but if we don’t find any, we’ll also look for legacy EXIF and IPTC metadata as well. If we find legacy metadata, we’ll write future changes back to both XMP and the legacy metadata blocks (to improve compatibility with legacy applications).

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My co-worker Aaron has a post on Adding strips and tiles to the Windows Media Center Start menu in Windows Vista:

With the redesign of the Start menu, Windows Media Center for Windows Vista also includes a new way of registering applications and entry points to appear on the Start menu. It is possible to add up to 2 new strips to the Start menu using existing extensibility mechanisms in Windows Media Center, and each of those 2 strips can contain up to 5 tiles.

(Yes, I’m still on vacation)

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It’s been a fun last few weeks here but it’s time for some vacation time. I know, I haven’t earned it and that I really should be staying in Redmond to work on DVB-x :).

I’ll be back in the office August 20. In the meantime spend some time on theGreenButton.com. And if you’re interested in HD DVD I hear that Peter (who I handed the feature off to) will be writing an article on it and posting it to The Media Center Sandbox.

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