Microsoft woos students with free gadgets, creative titles

Besides high pay and benefit packages, there are other -- perhaps less serious -- perks to working for a company like Microsoft. Like what? "I've got a beer fridge in my office, definitely a plus," boasted Joe Croney, a program manager at the world's largest software company, before a crowd of about 40 interested Penn students last night. Croney and other Microsoft employees came to Penn this week to help recruit hotly pursued students in the lucrative field of information technology. The event was sponsored by the Dining Philosophers, Penn's very own computer science club. The headliner of the event, Colleen Wheeler, is a self-described "Software Diva" -- it even says so on her business card. It's a title, in fact, that she negotiated as part of her own recruitment. Besides giving an overview to the options available for young prospects, Wheeler also gave away many cool gadgets -- even if the loud, flashing bouncy balls she gave out made for an obnoxious interruption every two minutes or so. But as students madly dashed for T-shirts and pizza, Wheeler gave a very informative presentation of what Engineering sophomore Vinny Liu described as a "cool, chill" company. Jesse Janosov, a Penn alumnus, currently works in the games department at Microsoft, and he too was on hand last night to answer questions about working conditions at the Seattle-based corporate giant. "Some days I still feel like I am in college," said Janosov, referring to the flexible work hours and laid-back mentality of his job. Getting paid to help create video games is something that Janosov has wanted to do ever since he was a small child. In such a competitive market, it is essential that companies such as Microsoft continue to recruit the "best and the brightest," according to Wheeler. She considered Penn to be a "top tier" school, ranked in the top 20 colleges that are sought after for fresh meat. Afterwards, Liu said he enjoyed the presentation for its casual ambience. Besides the fact that it is "good to get free stuff," he thought that the presenters really demonstrated "what it is really like" to work in a "pretty relaxed" environment in which workers can wear jeans to work, get free espresso and beer at their disposal, and still make more money by the time they are 30 than the majority of the population can. Engineering junior Tom Ferguson, though still impressed by the evening's activities, was disappointed that a company as large as Microsoft did not hire undergraduates in its research department. "In some cases undergraduates could benefit from the exposure... that could give students the experience of a real world computer science job," he said.

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