The college I attend has a major career fair every semester. I've been to it a few times, but honestly haven't perused any canned career the companies there are trying to push. As you can read in my previous writing, I would prefer to start my own business and work on my own ambitions. This year things changed a little, and quite unintentionally.

The night before the career fair their is a small gathering of large companies where students can talk to representatives without submitting resumes. Most importantly though, there was free food. That's why I was there at least. After eating most of the snacks at the table, I decided I might as well talk to a company. In jeans and a PETA (people for the eating of tasty animals) t-shirt I walked up to the Microsoft table.

I'm not going to bore you with a word for word, but the conversation went something like this:

Me: Hi, I'm not qualified to work for you, but I would just like to say that your products suck and aren't innovative.
Microsoft: sorry to hear that...
Me: Here is what you should have done... blah blah blah
Microsoft: interesting...
Me: Do what you want with it.
Microsoft: Bring me your resume tomorrow.
Me: maybe

I shook Microsoft's hand and went back home to have a laugh, threw together a resume and laughed some more. What a day.

Honestly, I don't care whether I get a job with Microsoft at all. I'm just looking for an outlet for some of my ideas. Even if I don't profit directly from my ideas. In the end I just want to have an operating system and software that makes sense.

With that attitude firmly in place, I strolled up to the booth the next day. Microsoft seemed happy to see me. I reached in my recently acquired Hitachi bag and pulled out a Nesquick folder with my resume. Again, a shortened version of the conversation:

Microsoft: Nice folder.
Me: Thanks
Microsoft: This is a resume?
Me: Yep, got any question?
Microsoft: WTF is this here?
Me: It's a thing I'm doing on my own time.
Microsoft: You do things without it being required? what else can you do?
Me: *blah blah blah blah*
Microsoft: Do you have a frame for this resume?
Me: No, sorry. Please give the folder back.
Microsoft: Oh, sorry.

The person I talked to is most likely not the person who makes the decision whether I get in or not. But if by some random chance I land a job with Microsoft as a Mechanical Engineer, I will do my best to bring some innovation into a company that has been stagnant for a decade.

In the future I'll post the ideas I proposed.

*edit-shortly after this all went down, I found an excellent robotics research job on campus. Probably for the best because Microsoft is far from fixable.*