TWI PROFILES
TWI PROFILE: LTC WAYNE HIATT, MICROSOFT CORP.
MOVING AT THE SPEED OF MICROSOFT
After nearly a decade in the Acquisition Corps and more than 25 years in the Army, LTC Wayne Hiatt jumped at the oppor- tunity to work in Training with Industry (TWI). “Ever since I was a second lieutenant, I was interested in applying,” Hiatt said.
“I liked the business side of the Army, and I’ve been loving it for the last nine years.”
Hiatt has defined his career by trying to learn as much as he pos- sibly can in each assignment. “Most people in the Acquisition Corps spend all their jobs single-tracked. I’m kind of like a mutt. I’ve probably done every acquisition job you can possibly do.”
“He landed with a good group in contracts” at Microsoft, said Pat Brady, the company’s lead for TWI. “Tey’ve absolutely loved having him onboard.” Working with that group, Hiatt said, has had a double benefit, because his day-to-day manager at Microsoft, MG Brian I. Geehan (U.S. Army, Ret.), was once his commanding general. “I am with the guy who was in charge of the Transportation Corps when I was a captain. When I was a commander in Iraq in 2003, he was the commanding general of the Transportation Corps. Now he’s retired military, and it’s been great. Not only am I getting Training with Industry expe- rience, I’ve been getting mentored on military stuff.”
It was Geehan, then retired for almost six years, who presided over Hiatt’s promotion ceremony to lieutenant colonel in Sep- tember 2013, three months into his stint in TWI.
SOFTENING THE SHOCK Microsoft has made a point of recruiting veterans and retired military. Te company takes part in TWI, the Secretary of Defense Corporate Fellowship and Air Force Education with Industry programs and has a recruiting program at Joint Base Lewis-McChord, WA, that it is expanding to the East Coast. Te program consists of 16 weeks of training on all Microsoft platforms for military members who will be separating from the service. Many who complete the program go to work at Micro- soft when they finish the course, Brady said.
Military men and women have gotten such good reviews, Brady said, that “I’m actually getting calls, ‘Can I get one?’ ”
Tat presence of veterans and retired military at Microsoft helped reduce the culture shock of going from uniform to suit, Hiatt said. Still, he was surprised by differences between the ways that the Army and Microsoft do things. Te first thing that struck him was how lean the company is. “In the Army, the higher your rank, the higher your command, the larger your staff is. If you’re a lieutenant colonel in the Acquisition Corps and you’re a product manager, you’re going to have anywhere from 50 to maybe 100 people working for you—military, civil- ian and contractor. At Microsoft, they eliminate all that. Brian Geehan is in charge of all the DOD delivery, and he might just have two or three people and just him, compared with a couple hundred when he was a general,” Hiatt said.
‘IT’S A LOT MESSIER’ Te next thing that surprised him was the passion of Microsoft employees for their work. “Passion is actually one of Micro- soft’s values,” he said. “If somebody doesn’t like their job, they encourage people to position themselves in a job they’re passion- ate about. If you’re not passionate, they really don’t want you. Within Microsoft, they hire and fire at will. I really believe that everyone is passionate about what they do, especially the people who support the Department of Defense. It’s not just making money. A lot of them are veterans or retired military, and they really believe in Microsoft and what they can do for DOD.”
Te “other side of the fence” in contracting also surprised him, Hiatt said. Te Army will generally have one contract to man- age for a given product, but on the industry side, “Tey have subcontractors, agreements and partnerships with other corpo- rations, small businesses and things like that. I actually learned almost everything that you could possibly know about how Microsoft manages contracts, how they operate, from hands-on training. It’s pretty complicated and a lot different from govern- ment contracting. It’s a lot messier.”
Another thing Hiatt found surprising was the lack of email.
“People at Microsoft communicate a lot more efficiently. I’m used to email. I come from a military where your boss sends you an email and if you don’t respond, he’s all over you.” Hiatt said that he understands the security issues that come with any
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Army AL&T Magazine
July–September 2014
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