One Way To Plan A Surprise Engagement Proposal
I had been planning to propose to my girlfriend during the month of June
(usually the best time of year in Seattle). Unfortunately, it turned out that I
had taken on a last minute trip that would keep me out for the rest of the
month, so my opportunities were pretty limited. I figured I'd have to make the
best of it and knew I could meet the challenge of finding a unique way of
surprising her.
The first step was to throw her off guard with my carefree attitude towards
engagement. I had taken her out to look at rings a few times so I could get an
idea of what she liked, but always played it off as a "someday" thing. We got to
a point where she realized that it was going to happen, and it was pretty much a
matter of trying to figure out when I was going to pop the question. However, if
the topic came up in conversation, I would say things like "I was at [local
supermarket] Fred Meyer today and saw their jewelry department…they were
right--I couldn't tell the difference between the real and fake diamonds" or "I
found a ring shop that will mount a nicely broken piece of windshield glass for
only a few bucks". I also told her about a website I had found where they have
Word templates for diamond certifications, so I might be able to certify my own
“diamonds” with the help of a color printer and some lamination magic.
After that I set up a bunch of possible occasions to keep her guessing. On
Wednesday she found out that she had a last minute one-on-one meeting with our
senior vice president, Eric Rudder, (she also works at Microsoft) so I told her
that we would go out to “celebrate” afterwards at the Space Needle for dinner
(which was an obvious “tip-of-the-hand” to her). Then again, we were also going
to spend this weekend at an oceanfront cabin, so maybe that would be it. If not
that, she would be flying to meet me in Boston next weekend for a friend’s
wedding, and if it didn’t happen then she figured that spending the 4th of July
in my hometown of New York would be an absolute guarantee. As a result, she
spent half this week trying to figure out where and when I was going to make my
move, and the other half preparing for the Eric review.
I’d like to take a few moments out to talk about an “Eric review”. These
reviews, like pretty much all executive reviews, are great challenges and
“rights of passage” that all employees get to go through at one time or another.
There are tons of urban myths about Microsoft executives tearing people to
pieces in reviews, so the “first time” can be very intimidating for an employee.
The reality is that the executives expect everyone to feel a strong sense of
ownership of their responsibilities and when people are unprepared or careless
with decisions they can be reminded of their responsibilities in a very direct
way. In fact, Microsoft was the first place that I had ever heard the term “own”
used to describe a role, such as “I own product planning for X” or “I own
performance testing on X”. I have realized that using the term “own” is a great
thing because it truly describes the level of responsibility and passion people
need to feel for what they do. If I “own the developer experience for building
applications using ABEK”, I had better know the top feature requests from ABEK
developers, the top improvements we’re making in the next version (and have damn
good reasons if the two lists don’t match exactly), the best ways to communicate
with ABEK developers, the top reasons why non-ABEK developers don’t use it, etc.
As you can probably imagine, it takes a lot of work to keep on top of all of
this, so reviews often require a lot of preparation. If you’re not prepared then
you’re not owning your responsibilities and you’re wasting everyone’s time.
So why did I bring all of this up? Well, I wanted to help you get a good feel
for the amount of effort she put in to getting ready for this review. It was
hours upon hours, and I spent a lot of time with her helping her to craft
wording for slides, as well as sit through hours worth of practice runs. It was
very time consuming for me, but well worth it.
How was it “well worth it” for me? Simple. It was well worth the opportunity
to spend the time with her. It was well worth the gain in knowledge of her
expertise. It was well worth the perspective she has with reviews. However, more
than anything, it was well worth it for the look on her face when she entered
the conference room for the review and realized that Eric wasn’t there—I was.
You see, there really was no Eric review. We had set it all up with the help
of some great people on Eric’s team. She walked in with a slide deck and out
with a ring—and a story.
In the end, that’s all she really wanted.