Moving on after two decades at Microsoft
I am moving on from Microsoft. I actually was planning on doing this in Febuary of next year, since I would have met the requirements for the ‘55/15’ program that allows anyone over the age of 55 and with 15yrs of service to quit and still recieve their unvested stock options. The original plan was to stay until February 2027 when this would kick in, and take a break for the summer. I’d planned to begin looking for a new job in the fall, and hopefully have a new position lined up by the time I left.
However, Microsoft decided to let their most senior engineers leave and I was offered a VRP (Voluntary Retirement Plan) package that was too good to pass up. So, I left Microsoft on July 1st, 2026 with the same 55/15 plan plus medical insurance and a nice payout that would carry me through the summer and into the fall. Thus began a new plan to take the summer off then start looking for a new job in the fall. I will be happily spending time with family as a break for the summer, then starting a new job in the fall. More on that coming soon. I am excited about this new chapter in my life and career, and I am looking forward to the opportunities that lie ahead.
I am grateful for the opportunity to have worked at Microsoft for the past 20 years, and I will miss my colleagues and friends there. I have learned a lot and grown as a software engineer, and I am proud of the work I have done. I will always look back on my time at Microsoft with fondness and appreciation.
It seems like a good time to reflect on my time at Microsoft and share some of my experiences and lessons learned. I will be writing a series of posts over the next few months about my time at Microsoft, the projects I worked on, and the people I worked with. I hope you will find them interesting and informative.
Note: The picture above is of me and a colleague at Microsoft, who I worked with for many years. We were on an adventure to Ecuador in 2009 to climb Mount Cotopaxi (19,347’) and visit the Galapagos Islands. It was a great trip and I will always remember it fondly.