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  Casually Speaking Interview: Bert M

June 05, 2007
Casually Speaking: Bert M

Welcome to Casually Speaking – the interview series that showcases the fantastic designers, artists, and developers who make MSN^® Games such a great gaming site!

This week we're turning the spotlight on one of our site's unsung heroes; developer Bert M. We chatted with the New England transplant about his behind the scenes role at MSN Games.

MSN Games:  What do you do here at MSN Games?

Bert M: I'm a Lead Software Development Engineer. My team works on the back-end services that support the site.  We build things like billing interfaces, authorization systems and statistics data stores. We're similar to the Offensive Line in football. It's a critical part of the offense but you never really know who those guys are unless the team gets a penalty!

MSN Games:  What is a typical day like for you? What are the main challenges you and your team face?

Bert M: I have two roles; I do development part of the time and management part of the time. When I have my engineering hat on I write code to support the site. Users don't really interact directly with the stuff my team builds - they're aware of it because of the user interface that presents the data or allows them to interact with it, but they don't directly touch our software. Time is our biggest pain point.  There are so many interesting problems to solve on top of the challenges of maintaining a live service that it’s a challenge to find the time to get everything done!

MSN Games:  Can you tell us a bit about your background?

Bert M: I'm the first generation American in my family.  My parents are from Italy originally. My dad basically just decided he wanted to come to America – he was kind of a dreamer that way. It's interesting culturally and quite funny because while my family is very European, I couldn't be any more American, if I tried. I don't know if it was rebellion, or what, but I've always been that way.

MSN Games: Have you always been interested in computers and programming?

Bert M: I had a Texas Instruments TI99/4A back when I was in high school. I played games and I tried a little bit of programming. My dad was a veterinarian and had a small office so I wrote some software for him as a way to get more allowance money! Then I went through this phase while I was studying for my Bachelor's in Engineering, at Tuft's University, when I really didn't like computers at all. I didn't like the typing! When I went to do my MSEE at the University of Pittsburgh I had to write some code and found it to be fun. To be honest it was easier than the electrical engineering I was doing so I thought 'Ah, maybe I should be doing this instead' and so I started doing development on various projects. I found computers interesting and engaging and something I could really wrap my head around at a time when I was finding electrical engineering stuff a little bit too terse - it wasn't very creative.

MSN Games:  How did you end up moving from engineering to software?

Bert M: I After getting my masters I decided to study for a PhD. I did it for a year but it was just way too much work – it was exponentially more work to get a PhD than a masters, so I figured school was obviously no longer the place for me and that I really ought to think about getting a job! I had a friend in California, went to stay with him for a while and got a job through the newspaper with a small multimedia company making CD-Rom titles in Sausalito, CA.

MSN Games:  And how did that lead you to Microsoft and MSN Games?

Bert M: I went on to work at several small companies, always in the entertainment/educational software field, and before I came here I was, developing back-end services to support games. During my career I've criss-crossed the country several times, moving from to CA to MA to CA to MA before ending up here in WA.

MSN Games: What attracted you to MSN Games?

Bert M: I found the Casual Games group to be the best fit in terms of team size, project scope and future directions. I’m really jazzed about cross-platform game play and the chance to support millions of concurrent users. I'm a big believer in wanting to broaden your audience and reaching more people. So what really excites me is being able to support and think about supporting millions and millions of users at the same time.

MSN Games: What advice would you offer to someone interested in doing your job? What qualities are important?

Bert M: Confidence, persistence and passion are great qualities to have. Being able to think outside the box and come up with creative solutions is important for any engineer. It's very easy to take something simple and make it complex, but the real skill is being able to take something that's really complex and simplify it down to its real base points and to be able to implement towards that.

Thanks Bert for taking the time to talk about your job and your experience working on the MSN Games team!

View the entire Casually Speaking archive!