Larry Osterman has written a brilliant post about his 20 years at Microsoft. He’s been through so many changes and reorganizations at Microsoft, he’s basically witnessed the whole of the personal computer revolution and it’s repercussions. I suppose a lot of others have as well, but in any case his write-up is superb:

I still have the letter that Microsoft sent me confirming my job offer. It’s dated January 16th, 1984. It’s formatted in Courier, and the salary and stock option information is written in ink. It’s signed (in ink) by Steve Ballmer. The offer letter also specifies the other benefits; it’s not important what they are. I also have Steve’s business card his job title? VP, Corporate Staffs. Yup, he was head of HR back then (he did lots of other things, but thats what his title was). I also have the employee list they gave out for the new hires, as I said before; there are only about 600 people on it. Of those 600 people, 48 of them are still with Microsoft. Their job titles range from Executive Assistant, to UK Project Troubleshooter, to Architect, to Director

Discovered Metroblogs today, and I quite like the London one, despite all the criticisms levelled at it in the comments. I’m sure it’ll improve in time. It’s made me think about going to the London Wetlands and the Thames Barrier Park.