Jeff Lin, guitarist for Seattle band Harvey Danger, talks about Virtual Earth 3D, work/life balance, and finding your destiny.

Geek in question: Jeff Lin

Job title: Program Manager, Virtual Earth 3D

What are you working on right now?
Virtual Earth 3D is all about realistic representation of the world. We’ve got a couple hundred cities with photo-realistic imagery and 3D geometry. You can add photos, make movies, do tours. It's actually super cool. I think it's one of the coolest things that Microsoft is doing.

Do you have to say that because you work on it?
Naw. I feel pretty lucky that I got this position. I just started in this group five months ago. I'd been over at MSN since 2005, and when I applied for this job, I was like, there's no way. I think I just lucked out.

Is Virtual Earth 3D a good stalking tool?
Ha — not yet. We’re still working on those features.

So, before Microsoft you had a rockstar era, what with your band Harvey Danger and the whole "Flagpole Sitta" thing. How did that transition work?
When you're a young musician you're like, "If this doesn't work out, I can always go back to school." And so when the band disintegrated in 2002, I went back to school to get my second bachelor's degree, in Computer Science.

After college, I came to Microsoft because the Program Manager tradition is very strong here — it’s where the role actually started. It's a unique role that suits me, because you're forced to deal with larger issues. How do you apply the technology? What problems are you trying to solve? Are you solving the right problems? What's the purpose of the technology? You're making something out of nothing, and your only boundary is your imagination.

Do you use some of those old Harvey Danger skills in your current gig?
Being a contributor in a creative collaborative process is a skill you can definitely hone being in a band. Collaborative processes are always hard. You're not ever going to get away from that bullshit, you know? Everyone can always use practice. Being able to overcome the reflexive ego response is important — if someone's attacking an idea, they're not attacking me

.…I'm still working on that one.
Being able to distinguish those things is really hard. But there's a certain point where it's not even about the idea any more -- it's just about the dynamic between people. It's the key to any really good creative collaboration. You have to be able to see beyond "mine" and "yours" and see "ours." You have to get over "I was wrong, you were right" and just see that, you know: that option is just better. It’s actually one of the things that’s always impressed me about Microsoft: the ability to admit that we’re wrong. There's constant self-criticism and self-assessment about how to do better here. People really take it to heart.

Jeff-relevant links:
Virtual Earth 3d Harvey Danger website Harvey Danger on Myspace Harvey Danger's latest album, which can be downloaded for FREE (that's a whole other story)

How do you feel about work/life balance?
I get it intellectually -- but personally, I don't get it. It's not work or life. It's ALL your life. Am I supposed to be working? Or am I supposed to be life-ing? What's the difference? I can't do it.

I try to look at it as, "What am I learning here?" as opposed to working for a paycheck. If you treat it that way, your mentality is different. It should never be a challenge to come to work. At any point, I can choose not to come. This company treats its employees very well, but it's not Microsoft's job to figure out your life for you and push you along that way. You don't want an adult daycare. You don't want a corporate mother. The responsibility lies with each individual to figure out their destiny.