We describe the activities of the Empirical Software Engineering (ESE) group at Microsoft Research. We highlight our research themes and activities using examples from our research on socio technical congruence, bug reporting and triaging, and data-driven software engineering to illustrate our relationship to the CSCW community. We highlight our unique ability to leverage industrial data and developers and the ability to make near term impact on Microsoft via the results of our studies. We also present the collaborations our group has with academic researchers. Author Keywords Software engineering, Socio technical congruence, bug tracking and triaging, data-driven software engineering ACM Classification Keywords D.2.5 [Software Engineering]: Testing and Debugging; D.2.7 [Software Engineering]: Distribution, Maintenance, and Enhancement ACM General Terms Human Factors, Management, Measurement