Starting a new Chapter in the Career of Mike Huguet

A couple of months ago an opportunity unexpectedly made its way into my life that would offer something different for my career.  At first I ignored it, but after a while I started thinking about the possibilities before me.  There were a couple of job openings at this “little” company, which you may have heard of before, Microsoft, that intrigued me.  I began asking myself, “Self, would you ever leave Sparkhound and if you would what would the job have to be like.”  Well, I wasn’t exactly sure, but this opportunity definitely was a possibility.  My wife and I discussed it and decided to just roll the dice and see what happens.  It is a bitter sweet moment, but I am excited to say that two months later the opportunity has become a reality and I have accepted a position with Microsoft.  I will be starting my new role as a .NET Premier Field Engineer (PFE) on October 24th.

I still absolutely love Sparkhound and will be a Sparky for life.  In fact, if things don’t work out with Microsoft, I will be on the phone with Kimmel, Noah, Mike, or Shawn asking to rejoin the team.  I’ve been a Sparky for many years now and I have helped this company grow from 20 to where it is today (not at all just me of course).  I’ve faced many wonderful and challenging days there and have grown with the company.  I’m proud of what the company has become and where it is striving to be.  I have made many lifelong friendships there so my ties won’t be going away.  I will continue to be involved in the technical community with user groups, but may have to take a breather from time to time for travel purposes.  It’s in my blood!

So what is this new job?  Well, the PFE role is part of the Premier Services team at Microsoft and is responsible for having the most advanced knowledge in a product and technology at MS, level 400.  There are only a couple of roles at MS that are expected to have this depth of knowledge and two of them are the actual product team members and the premier field engineers.  When the premier customers get in a jam and are having issues with the mission critical applications in the production setting and can’t figure them out I will help them.  I will be building and giving training workshops to customers, performing code and architectural reviews, as well creating tools, code examples, and best practice documentation.  There will be lot of training and travelling for the first year, but I will be based out of Baton Rouge.

I am looking forward to an awesome adventure with my new employer, Microsoft, and the family is ready to start another chapter in our life.