How did you get feedback from your peers?

While working as a vendor and contractor for Microsoft, I occasionally get feedback from my peers or managers.  Often, I would get CCed in an e-mail, or my manager would forward me their feedback.  The letters below are a small sample of the positive reinforcement I’ve received.  Employee names and e-mail addresses may be withheld for privacy.

Could you give me some of your favorites?

Neal Anderson, Sr. Program Manager for Honeywell / Alerton Research and Development

• You brought a level of involvement and customer-focus that I think is definitely needed for technical documentation. In fact, I indirectly shared with the General Manager that you were one of the two key contributors most responsible for the success of the Alerton Building Suite. That project hinged on the quality of your documentation.

Various Senior Program Managers, Microsoft Business Productivity Online Services

• David is a solid professional who displayed a high degree of reliability when delivering a project or representing support issues to Microsoft Desktop Management Services (DMS). He has been in close communication with the DMS teams, providing status updates to the support tiers on knowledge base articles, publishing and tailoring our troubleshooting guides, and driving an ongoing service improvement in the Knowledge Base area. David has demonstrated an impressive understanding of technology, support infrastructure and communication standards…  I’m sure he would make a great addition to your team, and I would recommend him as a great asset to any team as a PM or a technical writer. (For the complete letter, please see her Letter of Recommendation.)
• David has been instrumental in developing the content for our knowledge base as well as creating training videos for our customer’s common issues. The short training videos for our field techs have been great as they have cut down on travel costs for getting to the sites to do training, and the tech can keep them as reference in the future. Great job David!

Various Siemens Directors for the Microsoft Business Productivity Online Services Account, Siemens IT Solutions

• David, thank you for your support in the BPOS program over the last 2 + years. I appreciate your professionalism and commitment to quality through your attention to details.  You are always interested in analyzing what we do and how we do it.  Your willingness to work outside of your core responsibilities is also appreciated.  These efforts have impacted the program for the better as evidenced by the training and information videos you’ve created. You made the team better.
• You have been very accommodating to work individually as you have since you have come onboard with Siemens.  It has been a reflection of your professionalism and work experience.
   

Various coworkers, Microsoft Business Productivity Online Services

• David Jeroslow replaced me as the Primus Knowledge base writer/manager for the BPOS project. He was a pleasure to work with and was obviously very conscientious about the new position–very curious, very persistent in culling as much information as he could from me before I handed over the reins.  He will be an asset to whomever he works for and I’m sure will be enjoyed by his peers.
• David is the most dependable guy I’ve ever worked with. He’s quick on his feet, gets the job done, and is an all around excellent guy. Anyone who is fortunate enough to hire him will definitely appreciate the value he adds to any team he’s part of.
• I’m sorry to see you go, it’s been a pleasure working with you over this last year!  Your creation of training videos is excellent as well as your willingness to help others with tasks even when unrelated to your position. Your ability to manipulate data on the fly in both SQL and MS Office applications makes you a strong candidate in many fields. Good luck in your future endeavors!
• David has always struck me as a dedicated individual. He’s proven honest and intelligent. He’s a self-motivated man who has never shied away from a question in order to fully understand an issue.  I’d sum up David as a responsible, self-motivated individual with a strong dedication to getting a task done.
• David is friendly, knowledgeable and professional. He has done an excellent job of keeping the knowledge base current for our teams, and always handles requests for high priority updates quickly and with a positive attitude. He is definitely going to be missed around here and I wish him all the best wherever he goes.
• Very well done videos Dave!  If someone can’t follow these, they shouldn’t be using a computer!

Program Manager, MSN Messenger in International Localization

I wanted to give you some feedback on David Jeroslow. I’ve worked with David on the last two releases of Messenger. I work on a lot of pane help projects across MSN and I wanted you to know that he is one of best writers I’ve worked with. Not only does David know a lot about the Messenger project itself, but he also fully understands the UA process from a content creation standpoint as well as the localization handoff process. David actually helped me learn a lot about the process when I first joined the MSN International UA team. He is always very proactive in communicating information and has a great attention for detail, delivering complete handoffs every time.

I also appreciated David’s participation in the International Kick-Off meeting… Not only did he provide a great deal of necessary information to the International team members, he also began investigating what it would take to implement market based help for Messenger. This has been an ask from the International team for a long time.

I recently had to rebalance my work load and Messenger is one of the projects I’m giving up. I struggled with that decision for a while because I really enjoy working with David. But in the end I knew that because he does such a great job, Messenger would be very easy for somebody to pick up. We’ve been able to form a great partnership over the last few months and I will miss working with him.

Various Group Managers, Microsoft Global Help Desk

• David, you have done a great job in creating the self-help videos for the helpdesk, which should result in savings of thousands of dollars. The quality of your work was above and beyond what I expected.
• David, it was great having you on the team! You do excellent work and this project was a great success.
• I just wanted to say thanks for the quick work you did on the email server video. The video was excellent and it helped a lot of people to help themselves. Thanks!
• I do like the production quality, whomever is creating the videos did a great job!

Various Program Managers, MSN Messenger and MSN Customer Design Center

• Just a quick note for my feedback on David.  He let’s me know when his deadlines are, he’s a very good communicator, he participates and attends meetings, he meets deadlines, and he’s very good at what he does.  He’s a complete pleasure to work with.
• It’s been good working with David.  He’s very responsive, enthusiastic and I think the quality of his work is very good.
• Nooooo! We will miss you David. Good luck J
• I hope you enjoyed your time here—there sure were a lot of changes while you were around! I enjoyed working with you and do wish you goodness in the future.
• Hey thanks again for all your hard work, hope you come back. J