It wasn\u2019t long after graduation in the spring of 2016 that Sam Prashker, a graduate of the School of Computer Science, packed his bags and headed to Japan.\u00a0 He spent the following month working as a Software Development Engineer for Microsoft\u2019s Tokyo office. We caught up with Sam to find out more about what it was like working for Microsoft and what lead him to Tokyo.<\/p>\n
So you moved to Japan after graduation. What drew you to working in Asia?<\/strong><\/p>\n I had wanted to travel as part of a post-graduation vacation. I was not set on where I would go but I remembered that a student at Carleton had come to one of my classes years prior and basically asked \u201cwhy not Japan?\u201d.<\/p>\n I kind of had an epiphany that growing up a lot of the stuff I have watched I never consciously recognized that it came from Japan like Studio Ghibli, Nintendo, etc. So I realized now that I had an incentive to go to Japan, to learn more about the culture, to explore their technology, and to grow as a person. I\u2019ve never travelled internationally, and I was alone to boot.<\/p>\n Originally I was set on teaching English, something that most foreigners can do with minimal trouble, given that many Japanese children these days want to learn English. It was outside my area of expertise but it would offset the cost of the trip significantly.<\/p>\n However, as luck would have it, emailing the Carleton Recruiter for Microsoft, things could not have turned out any better.<\/p>\n Why were you drawn to working at Microsoft?<\/strong><\/p>\n I always liked to tinker and create small scripts to increase my productivity when using the computer. If I worked at Microsoft it meant that I\u2019d have a chance to put stuff like that into production and reach the most amount of people.<\/p>\n Oh and, growing up my friends would always say \u201cdon\u2019t forget about us when you work for Microsoft\u201d so maybe I subconsciously didn\u2019t want to disappoint them.<\/p>\n What are they like as an employer?<\/strong><\/p>\n The environment is very relaxed. The amount of internal tools and systems are absolutely phenomenal. I have weekly standups with my manager who has always gone above and beyond to help me with any troubles or concerns, either inside or outside of work. They also pay very well, in addition to actually covering the cost of my accommodations and reimbursing my flight tickets to Japan.<\/p>\n What is your daily work like?<\/strong><\/p>\n Currently I am working on the Office Team \u2013 responsible for all products under the Office moniker. Going more granular than that, I am on a small scrum team responsible for the Office Lens iOS application. If you have an iPhone be sure to check it out, lots of new features coming out soon like Office Lens on the iPhone App Store.<\/p>\n Every day we have a small standup meeting to explain what we\u2019ve done in the past day, what is next, and any comments concerns. It allows a very fast development cycle for a ton of work to get done. Any engineer is allowed to pluck a task that they wish to do from the prioritized list of bugs and features.<\/p>\n