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This is how great it feels when Microsoft respects you

It's not easy becoming a Microsoft Most Valuable Professional. When it happens, your love life improves and your sense of self soars. As this video shows.

Chris Matyszczyk
2 min read
What a feeling! SoftwareLab/YouTube Screenshot by Chris Matyszczyk/CNET

It's far easier to earn Microsoft's disdain than its respect.

This, by many accounts anyway, is a company where people fight for the tiniest territory and the minutest advantage. So when it comes to outsiders, the natural attitude is presumably, "Who the hell are you?"

Some, though, manage to creep past the skepticism and become accepted as Microsoft Most Valuable Professionals.

These are people who have proselytized Microsoft's inner soul to the outside world. These are people for whom the word "Apple" is never fruitful.

So how does it feel to be accepted into the inner sanctum? Finally, there is a film that shows the true scope of the chest-puffing and reputation-buffing.

Here we see a man whose mustache and six-pack have seen better days.

Yet the minute he becomes a Microsoft MVP, he feels great. Truly great.

So great that he quits his company and starts his own. So great that he walks up to the one woman upon whom he's always had his eyes and proposes to her. Yes, in the office. His lawyer said it was OK.

She, on hearing that he's now an MVP, is only too happy to become his most valuable partner.

She does, though, want peer-to-peer support, day and night.

This video, posted by SoftwareLab, shows just what a radical change a little Redmond respect can make to your life.

I look forward to hearing from others among the now 4,000 Microsoft MVPs on how elevation to that status brought them to an entirely new emotional, financial and physical level in their human development.