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But then Micro$oft could be tempting...

Then you will be REALLY burned out. They work you to death over there if you are an employee.

Remembers back when Windows 2000 came to market? Microsoft ran a promotion for three weeks where they gave away free copies of Windows 2000 Professional to lucky winners each week.

Microsoft initially subcontracted the work of setting up that promotion to a company in Utah (U.S. Web). That company took the work but had NO IDEA how to make it happen since they had to use their own web and database servers and make it look seamless to folks surfing Microsoft's site and clicking on the promotion.

This company turned around and subcontracted the work to another company in Colorado Springs, CO by the name of Saligent Software. They grabbed the contract, but also had NO IDEA how to make it happen. Now time was running short.

Saligent Software contacted my company and I agreed to do the work. I had to order high-end servers, software, high-speed rack space, etc., and set up the entire infrastructure in Denver to seamlessly integrate with Microsoft's web page. All of the web content had to flow through the various levels at Microsoft to make sure that that it met their specs.

Then I had to program all of the ASP and database software to capture all of the data so that the marketing folks at Microsoft could run all of their business analysis on it.

This system was up and running in 3 weeks, from the initial hardware order to a finished product hooked into Microsoft's network. The promotion ran flawlessly and my servers got hammered. Microsoft generates a TON of web traffic.

I also had to write the code that picked the winners each week and e-blasted the losers to thank them for entering. When everything was done I gave Microsoft's Marketing department a copy of the SQL Server database and they didn't have a clue what to do with it. I had to move everything over to an Access database so that they knew how to use it.