Aristides

I'm part of the technical team for the Graduate programme, working for Windows Live Mobile in Europe. The training that we get is combined for both technical and business people. This helps because you're not just learning from the training itself, but also from exposure to other graduates who are from different business areas of Microsoft. You get to learn with these people, and that's actually a very valuable asset. It's an open door policy, and you're going to learn a lot by talking to other people, when people make you code reviews, when they make the same reviews, when you're just interacting with other people.

I think that the support part of the company comes down to the people you're working with. Yes, I have a mentor, who's good when you need to talk about anything personal or related to work, etc., and need someone who's ahead of you in the career model. Someone whom, basically, you'd aspire to be in the same position as within the next two or three years. For the other things, I think the main support comes from the team you're working in. Here a lot of the people are the same age, from the same situations, we come from different places in Europe. They have the same kind of problems, they're looking for friends. You end up working with friends, rather than co-workers. So a lot of the support comes from them.

The best thing about my job and also the graduate programme is, I think, the impact you can have. Here, it doesn't matter if you're a fresh graduate. If you have good ideas and you know who you're talking to and who you need to talk to, to get things done.

In the future, I see technology moving into people's hands. More people have mobiles than PCs. It's not going to be about what you can do on the web, but what the web can do for you.