Pivotal Moments with John Lam
Achieve your career and life goals sooner by learning from the pivotal moments of my guests. Each Monday a new guest, mostly working in tech and Microsoft, will share with you pivotal stories from their careers and lives and the lessons they learned. Hosted by John Lam.
Mon, August 15, 2022
Ep. 14 Defying Conventional Wisdom: Harris Syed
Show Chapters Full-text transcript Coming to America (01:15) Coming to Microsoft (03:50) Blaster (09:16) Cortana (20:05) The Speaker (22:03) Trust and AI (31:11) Promotion to Partner (40:04) Partnerships (46:30) What brought Harris outsized joy (55:59) Links from the show Blaster Worm COM DCOM protocol specification Harmon Kardon Invoke speaker Send me feedback! Music credits –––––––––––––––––––––––––––––– Track: Lost In Medina — Amine Maxwell [Audio Library Release] Music provided by Audio Library Plus Watch: https://youtu.be/qNSdpqSkRe4 Free Download / Stream: https://alplus.io/lost-medina ––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––
Mon, July 11, 2022
Ep. 13 Rong Lu: from Engineer to PM to Manager, her 16+ year journey at Microsoft
Show Chapters Full-text transcript Intro (00:36) What is a PM? (00:58) Remote is hard (03:39) Pivotal Moment #1: Moving to Redmond (04:46) Great Managers (07:24) From Feature Team to Cross-Team Collaboration (08:23) Owning cross-company collaboration (10:44) From acquisition to a partnership playbook (16:39) Creating the Visual Studio Code C++ Extension (17:30) Pivotal Moment #2: Becoming a Manager (21:05) Autonomy vs. Directed (23:58) Has your perception of a manager changed much now that you are one? (25:04) Situational Leadership (26:16) Coaching vs. autonomy (30:27) Pivotal Moment #3: Dev to PM (32:47) What brought Rong outsized joy (37:12) Outtro (39:46) Links from the show A Great Boss is hard to find, difficult to leave, and impossible to forget Send me feedback! Music credits –––––––––––––––––––––––––––––– Track: Lost In Medina — Amine Maxwell [Audio Library Release] Music provided by Audio Library Plus Watch: https://youtu.be/qNSdpqSkRe4 Free Download / Stream: https://alplus.io/lost-medina ––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––
Mon, June 27, 2022
Ep.12 Jill Jacobson: on UX Design at Microsoft, her circuitous journey to UX design from industrial design, and rediscovering joy from creative pursuits
Show Chapters Full-text transcript Intro (00:36) The mystery of the churning Jupyter notebook users (01:45) The importance of understanding your users (09:32) From an aptitude test in high school to industrial design (13:05) Learning industrial design at Western Washington University (15:10) First job out of college (17:59) Getting fired from her first job (20:15) Becoming an intern again (22:04) An opportunity to learn what she really wanted to do (22:48) A crash course in becoming a UX Designer, on the job (27:05) Why team is more important than technology (30:22) Jill is now a full-time employee! (36:03) On rediscovering things that bring us joy (38:16) How to optimize your Kindle experience (41:03) An outsized amount of joy: a plain air tripod (45:05) Conclusion (47:33) Outtro (48:43) Links from the show Jill's Instagram Jill's web site AIMS Aptitude Testing Libby Story Graph Music credits –––––––––––––––––––––––––––––– Track: Lost In Medina — Amine Maxwell [Audio Library Release] Music provided by Audio Library Plus Watch: https://youtu.be/qNSdpqSkRe4 Free Download / Stream: https://alplus.io/lost-medina ––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––
Mon, June 20, 2022
Ep.11 Tim Heuer: on changing from evangelism to product development, making changes to his health, and the characteristics of a great PM
Link Link to the full-text transcript Show Chapters A Pivotal Moment: Getting Healthy 01:32 Writing down calories in and calories out 03:00 Tim's first adult bicycle 04:33 One in, one out 06:37 Change can be more permanent if you do it with others 07:39 Early career: developer evangelism 08:54 Into the lion's den: Open Source 10:08 Better ways to learn from our field organization 12:31 How to listen to your biggest fans 16:07 A Pivotal Moment: moving from evangelism to product 17:49 The ship bug 18:57 Some career advice 21:22 A Pivotal Moment: moving into people management 22:22 Finding time for IC work 23:45 Beginner's mind 25:37 Tip: creating separation between work and home 27:12 It's not just people that change, organizations can change too 30:10 A Pivotal Moment: someone saw something in Tim 31:48 Old tools vs. new tools: which are more productive? 35:12 Access 2.0 36:47 Low code vs. high code vs. ? 38:34 Pickleball: An outsized amount of joy 40:33 Links from the show Tim's Twitter Tim's Web Site OSCON 2006: The Lion's Den Moots Cycles Pickleball in NYT Music credits –––––––––––––––––––––––––––––– Track: Lost In Medina — Amine Maxwell [Audio Library Release] Music provided by Audio Library Plus Watch: https://youtu.be/qNSdpqSkRe4 Free Download / Stream: https://alplus.io/lost-medina ––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––
Mon, June 13, 2022
Ep.10 The Wisdom of my guests: looking at my conversations with my first 9 guests through the lens of Change, Trying on the Job for Size, and Mistakes
Feedback wanted! Please send specific feedback to: jlam@iunknown.com and help me make the show better for you! What would you like to get out of this podcast series? What other questions would you like me to ask? What other guests would you like me to talk to? Link to the full text transcript Links to sections (with timestamps) Intro Change: 01:34 Changing from Academia to Industry: 01:46 Changing from the Army Rangers to Microsoft: 03:02 Changing from Bay Street to Microsoft Way: 04:36 Changing from solving other peoples' problems to creating problems for other people to solve: 05:56 Changing a role from PM to Developer: 09:12 Moving from Windows to DevDiv: 12:08 Change is the only constant: 16:17 School doesn't always prepare you for the job: 23:34 Learning on the job: 25:39 Trying on the new job for size: 30:17 A (somewhat) traditional Microsoft Internship: 30:54 The value of a co-op program: trying many different jobs on for size: 32:30 From an MBA to Data Science: 36:31 On making mistakes: 40:18 Conclusion: 48:07 External Links Music credits –––––––––––––––––––––––––––––– Track: Lost In Medina — Amine Maxwell [Audio Library Release] Music provided by Audio Library Plus Watch: https://youtu.be/qNSdpqSkRe4 Free Download / Stream: https://alplus.io/lost-medina ––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––
Mon, June 06, 2022
Ep.9 Larry Osterman: on working at Microsoft for over 37 years from MS-DOS to Azure and advice on how to have a long and productive career at the company
Links to sections (with timestamps) Larry's been here for 37 years 10 months ... or has he? 01:53 Carnegie Mellon in the 1980s: 03:04 Interviewing for a small 500 person startup in Seattle: 06:01 Meeting Steve Ballmer, "Head of HR": 08:23 Interviewing with Gordon Letwin: 10:50 Flying to Paris to fix a floppy drive bug in MS DOS 4.0: 13:33 Burgermaster for lunch and naming objects in MS DOS: 16:58 Documenting the creation of Windows NT: Greg Zachary and Helen Custer: 19:35 On the importance of lunch conversations in driving the culture of a team: 23:30 It's Alive! Windows NT running Reversi on an i860 emulator: 28:04 Thursday Beers, MAPI Beers and the Weekly World News: 30:08 Rewriting the Beep() API in Windows Vista to save tens of millions of dollars: 34:22 Larry's brief tenur in Microsoft Research: 43:14 The legendary Exchange Server "Stonehenge Party": 49:03 Scalability Day and Microsoft's beginnings as an enterprise software company: 55:26 How Larry's biggest feature in Windows 7 kept killing gamers in-game: 01:04:44 The origins of the Windows Runtime team in Windows 8: 01:07:09 The origin story of the IUnknown.com domain name: 01:11:26 How Larry enabled language projections in WinRT using COM: 01:12:34 From Windows to Azure: Confidential Compute and encrypted VMs: 01:20:13 On joining DevDiv and the Azure SDK team and becoming "mini-Jeff": 01:27;17 What advice would you give someone just starting their career at Microsoft? 01:32:28 Something that gave Larry an outsized amount of joy recently: 01:37:21 External Links Larry's Glowforge Larry's ornate box, cut on the Glowforge The Goupil G4 with the showstopper floppy drive bug Gordon Letwin Showstopper by G. Pascal Zachary Inside Windows NT by Helen Custer PC Roadkill by Michael Hyman Music credits –––––––––––––––––––––––––––––– Track: Lost In Medina — Amine Maxwell [Audio Library Release] Music provided by Audio Library Plus Watch: https://youtu.be/qNSdpqSkRe4 Free Download / Stream: https://alplus.io/lost-medina ––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––
Mon, May 30, 2022
Ep.8 Sid Unnithan: on changing jobs at Microsoft, preparing for informational interviews, imposter syndrome and autonomy in the PM role
Table of Contents How the Customer Driven Playbook influenced how Sid thinks about PM (14:34) How Sid prepared for his informational interview with our team (15:49) The importance of preparing for your informational interview (17:23) How we structure our PM interviews in DevDiv (19:40) Imposter syndrome and what we can do about it (24:05) On rubrics and career progression (28:54) Side-hustle entrepreneurial thinking while working at a big company (34:20) Learning about customers via jobs-to-be-done and customer interviews (41:52) The lack of respect that PMs face when working with some engineering teams (46:24) On the importance of autonomy and agency in the PM role (55:52) Building products is a team sport (57:00) Travel bidets, cultural barriers and friction in experiences (1:00:36) Transcript Link to the full text transcript (with audio player!) Links The Customer Driven Playbook The Jobs-To-Be-Done framework The Hypothesis Progression Framework for Customer Development ** Some of the above links are affiliate links for which I earn a commission from the vendor if you purchase a product.
Mon, May 23, 2022
Ep.7 Dustin Campbell: on transitioning from PM to Dev mid-career, building .NET developer tools and escaping from a software sweatshop in Las Vegas
This week, I'm talking with Dustin Campbell, a Principal Software Development Engineer who's been working on tooling at Microsoft for nearly 15 years. He's worked in Visual Basic.NET, the Roslyn C# compiler, the C# extension for Visual Studio Code, and the WinForms designer in the latest release of .NET Core. He has an undergraduate degree in jazz performance guitar, which naturally led him to building spam tools for his father, then to a software sweatshop in Las Vegas before finally landing at Microsoft. Along the way, I learned what distinguishes compiler engineers from other species of software engineers, whether there is any hope for paring down the concept count to empower non-professional software developers, and why immutable synax trees are awesome. Links from the show -
Mon, May 16, 2022
Ep.6 Jeffrey Mew: on experiences at Microsoft as an early-in-career PM, the Waterloo co-op experience and the impact that has had on him, and his love of optimization
This week, I'm talking with Jeffrey Mew who's been working on quite a few projects on my team at Microsoft for nearly 3 years. Jeffrey's a graduate of the unique co-op program at the University of Waterloo in Canada, where he interned with us before making the decision to come on as a full time employee. Today, we talk about what makes the co-op program at Waterloo unique, and why Microsoft values so highly the graduates of this program. In fact, at one point a few years back when we hit "peak Waterloo", we had 5 Waterloo graduates on our team! We talk about how PM is really an inter-disciplinary career and what you might be able to do to help prepare for this during school. Along the way, Jeffrey shares with me how he gained valuable experiences in each of the three major projects that he's done at Microsoft: launching Jupyter Notebooks in VS Code, partnering with Facebook on PyTorch tooling, and building a brand new data wrangling experience in VS Code. Links from the show: University of Waterloo Co-Op Jupyter Notebooks in VS Code PyTorch in VS Code Data Wrangler is coming soon :)
Mon, May 09, 2022
Ep.5 Sharon Xu: on changing careers from finance to tech, how a joint degree in business and engineering made it possible and her experiments with art and social media
Link to full text transcript Tim Urban's Life Path Picture Tim Urban's Primitive Mind and Higher Mind Daniel Pink's The Power of Regret Ivey Business Review Instagram - Guan's Art Bret Victor Inventing on Principle YouTube - Gawx YouTube - Frank Tedesco's OMEGLE playlist Sharon's TikTok Music credit: –––––––––––––––––––––––––––––– Track: Lost In Medina — Amine Maxwell [Audio Library Release] Music provided by Audio Library Plus Watch: https://youtu.be/qNSdpqSkRe4 Free Download / Stream: https://alplus.io/lost-medina ––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––
Mon, May 02, 2022
Ep.4 Leo Yao: on his immigrant journey from China to Microsoft, what it was like going to college and interning at Microsoft during COVID, and his first impressions of life as a PM
Link to the full text transcript Music credit: –––––––––––––––––––––––––––––– Track: Lost In Medina — Amine Maxwell [Audio Library Release] Music provided by Audio Library Plus Watch: https://youtu.be/qNSdpqSkRe4 Free Download / Stream: https://alplus.io/lost-medina ––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––
Mon, April 25, 2022
Ep.3 Ryan Bouchard: on using data science to grow products, managing a team of data scientists, and moving from the Army Rangers to a career at Microsoft
Link to the full text transcript Dog Company: The Boys of Pointe du Hoc -- the Rangers Who Accomplished D-Day's Toughest Mission and Led the Way across Europe Upstream: The Quest to Solve Problems Before They Happen Music credit: –––––––––––––––––––––––––––––– Track: Lost In Medina — Amine Maxwell [Audio Library Release] Music provided by Audio Library Plus Watch: https://youtu.be/qNSdpqSkRe4 Free Download / Stream: https://alplus.io/lost-medina ––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––
Sat, April 09, 2022
Ep.2 Joe Binder: on what Program Managers really do, learning from his mistakes in his 18+ year career, and the balance he gets from kayaking on Puget Sound
This was a fun conversation about many things, including: Explaining what a Program Manager in Developer Division does to three different audiences: his kids, a new college grad, and an industry veteran Why he thinks he gets more mileage in his day job out of his English major than his Computer Science major How someone can spend three years working on memcpy What working with large partners like Windows, Azure, and Office really entails and how to be effective in that role Why he really wanted to come to the Pacific Northwest 18 years ago and why he decided to stay What it was like listening to customer feedback in the early days of the Visual Basic .NET team What we should have built instead of Lightswitch How his super power of not taking being yelled at personally contributed to his career success The balance and joy that he gets from living near Puget Sound and his fishing kayak Why the Azure CLI needed to be rewritten Transcript Links: Visual Studio Lightswitch Fishing Kayak Azure CLI Microsoft Open Tech
Sat, April 09, 2022
Ep.1 Austin Henley: on moving from a professorship at Tennessee to Microsoft, open problems in developer tools research, and bouldering to strengthen the mind and body
Austin recently joined the PROSE (Program Synthesis) team in Developer Division from the University of Tennessee where he was an Assistant Professor in the Computer Science department. In this conversation, Austin and I discuss such topics as: His recently discovered love of LEGO as an adult How bouldering helps him strengthen his problem solving skills The differences and similarities between working as a professor and as a Program Manager at Microsoft The effectiveness of using a 'flipped classroom' teaching technique How Visual Studio and Visual Basic 6 got him started in programming How to use feedback loops in recommendation systems to generate superior results What we can do to improve tools for software developers by better understanding what their intentions are Show transcript Some links from the show: What a $500,000 grant proposal looks like - Austin Z. Henley (austinhenley.com) Nintendo Entertainment System LEGO set The Design of Everyday Things Scott Fleming (Austin's PhD advisor) - The University of Memphis OpenAI Codex GitHub Copilot · Your AI pair programmer
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