Last night our family got together with two other families who we ski a lot with and each of us have a kid who ski together all the time, and they spend time together off the mountain as well.

It’s pretty hard to recognize people unless you are familiar with their clothes, so it is nice when you can see people’s faces.

One of the parents mentioned how so many of his LinkedIn contacts are other Microsoft employees. Turns out both of the dads are at Microsoft. I didn’t work with either of them when I was at the company, and we talk about so many other things than Microsoft. The one thing one dad said being an executive is he gets LinkedIn requests so much from Microsoft employees after a while his LinkedIn looks like a Microsoft Directory.

Out of curiosity I wondered what % of my contacts are current and ex-Microsoft employees. I worked there 14 years (1992-2006), and live in Redmond so Microsoft would be highest. Adding it up 7.7% of my 944 connections have Microsoft as the company. Next in size of contacts is Gigaom, Google, Apple, and Schneider Electric. I can understand Gigaom. What was interesting to see that I had more connections at Google (didn’t work at) than I do at Apple (worked at 1985-1992). The low Apple count could be leaving Apple to go to Microsoft is not a popular thing to do. :-)

It’s been 8 years since I left Microsoft and it was good to see that my Microsoft contacts are less than 10% of my LinkedIn profile given I spent 14 years there and live in Redmond.

What did make sense is 20.6% of my connections are in the Seattle Area which is #2. #1 for where my connections live is SF Bay Area with 20.8%. Well that is basically a tie and make sense given I spend so much time in the bay area and so much of my work is related to clients in the bay area. Some people see me so often they think I live in the bay area which I did do from 1960-1992.