VS Code: By Developers, For Developers

What do innovators want? To solve problems for real people.

Knowing your audience is key, but it can often be the hardest part. Teams spend significant time and energy trying to step into their customers’ shoes, conducting user research, customer meetings, focus groups — the list goes on. But for one of our teams here at Microsoft Vancouver (MSV), it’s not an issue. Their focus group surrounds them every day: their peers here at MSV and throughout Microsoft’s global network.

We sat down with the Visual Studio Code team here in Vancouver to ask how they make the most of our diverse ecosystem when developing their product.

“Visual Studio Code, which is typically called VS Code, is a code editor,” said Brett, Principal Software Engineer, and lead for the VS code team here in Vancouver, working on the application’s Python extension. “It’s something you use kind of like a text editor — like Word, — but it’s for writing software. It assists you with writing out your code and helps make software easier to write and develop.”

VS Code’s team is spread out around the world. Given this, the teammates in Vancouver contribute to the product in various capacities. Luciana is a Senior Product Manager, while Paula and Andrea are Software Engineers. Luciana and Paula work on the Python extension directly with Brett, while Andrea works on shipping features for the main application. This isn’t uncommon at MSV as Microsoft’s product teams are large and globally distributed.  The model ensures a consistently diverse set of minds are all working as One Microsoft.

For the VS Code team, connecting with colleagues is not only welcomed, but crucial. On top of their millions of external customers, a large portion of Microsoft’s developers use VS Code to ship their own products, making peer feedback invaluable.

“Our community here in Vancouver is so close knit that we always end up meeting people who are using our products,” noted Luciana. During our monthly socials, employees from across campus, representing dozens of Microsoft’s product teams come together to meet each other and share their knowledge.

“Whenever there’s a social, I get to meet people who work on a bunch of different products,” added Paula.

It’s in moments like these that the team gathers feedback, and the spirit of One Microsoft really comes alive. “I always really liked working on projects where I get to see what I’ve done immediately in the product,” explained Andrea, “Especially because we ship so often, our products and our features are in the hands of our users quite quickly and then we’re able to get feedback directly from them.”

And it’s a two-way street. Making a product like VS Code — which is a top choice for developers looking to solve problems with software — has given Brett, Andrea, Paula, and Luciana a coveted set of perspectives.

“We’ve had a lot of people come to us because we work in such a diverse office,” says Brett, who shared that on top of providing feedback on how VS Code can improve to meet the evolving needs of developers, MSV colleagues often tap him and his team for advice on the development of their own products.

“It’s great to be able to help such a wide ranging, diverse group of people here in the office, who happen to run that whole gamut from hardware to open source and everything in between – and just being able to provide our expertise by physically being here in Vancouver.”

The connections made within MSV are valuable for individual career growth as much as for product development. Luciana moved to Canada to work on the VS Code Vancouver team five years ago after graduating from university. She recently celebrated advancement to Senior Product Manager.

“I was able to do that from Vancouver because of the impact that we make at a large scale throughout the world,” remarked Luciana.

Software development has its challenges and opportunities. The same solution doesn’t always work for everyone, so keeping a pulse on your target users is key.

“I think the chance to work on a project that impacts so many people, not only within the company, but across the globe is extremely fulfilling and a privilege,” says Brett. “And it’s a privilege because not everyone has to use VS code. It’s a choice. And it’s great that we get to create this product that people choose to use, over and over and over again, throughout the globe, day in and day out.”