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Freedo & his space

Career advice - from executive speech (the end)

Learn from past experience

Don’t’ be afraid to make mistakes , for many people, we tend to get, what if we fail, what if we are making a mistake and not doing the right thing, and that’s actually not good, because sometimes the best way to know whether something is going to work is to actually try and go back and say why it didn’t work, maybe just one little part of that will go wrong thing and changing that.

Don’t worry about fail, if you making the same mistake 3 times then worried (laugh).

Making a mistake once is really nothing to worry about.

I wouldn’t allow somebody to if I’m a manager ,hey you know, I just feel like we writing messenger core platform, just because I think I can make that nicer and find out that 3 weeks messenger doesn’t work and hundreds of millions of users. I probably wouldn’t allow that somebody to make that kinds of mistakes.

But most the time, when we do something, if we don’t try, we wont ever know.

Innovation

When talk about innovation, I actually for my team, I have set up a commitment, and one of the commitment is about innovation, it’s not just about product innovation, I’d like to have people think about some new innovation on the products, on the features, some great idea, somebody helps the team to win.

But also it can be in the area of process, what about test driven development, what about a different process, the way I test the code, the way I do the usability study, whatever I did, just always be thinking about new ways of trying things. Or even if you learn some great concepts in the school, you went to a class, try to see how it works in your work as well.

Own your own career

At Microsoft, it’s on of those, the company is really flexible, that’s one thing I really like Microsoft. You know my boss isn’t going to tell me that, for the next year, you are going to test on messenger, when you done a year of that, you are going to do this and that and eventually you will be here. You know it’s really up to me, up to the individual where I want to drive.

That really has a lot of benefits in many different ways, you know I have seem that over and over again, let’s say some developers, after been developer for 5 years, I really interested in been a program manager, I really like the design part of that, of the process, I really want to have a big impact on that, well, that ‘s possible.

What I want to do, I can talk to my manager , well, I really like to go, to work in program management. My boss can say, if you wanna be a program manager, you really need to improve the communication skill, here are some of the classes you should take, in the next few months I will work with you to help you get there, then you can go interview somewhere to become a program manager, or even my boss has the program manager position available.

My boss isn’t going to tell me that I should go become a program manager, it’s really up to me as an individual, to decide what discipline I want my career to take, where I want to go, what product I want to work on, it really it’s up to you, as an individual to drive that.

You know, again, it’s not something that happens over night, obviously in next 2,3 years, I sure you are not going to make many too big changes because it’s going to take you times to get familiar with the processes at Microsoft, culture at Microsoft, just for your long term career, just be thinking about it’s really up to you to own and drive your own career.

Communication

Communication is really important as well, I call it up and down, so if I’m a leader, I really need to be able to communicate to my team, and to my manager. As an individual contributor, I really need to communicate to my manager, about my achievements, my challenges, any problems, even the bad news, like if I’m going to not able to meet my commitment.

So really communication is very key, don’t ever assume that your boss knows what you are doing.

You know I can’t go and learn everything about what every month my team is doing.

If I assume my boss knows everything that I was doing, my team was doing, I probably will be very supervised because he won’t know that.

So really make sure that you communicate properly.

Constant Change

Change will always happen, the only thing that constant is change.

Whether it’s organizationally , whether it’s process, whether you like change or not, it’s going to happen.

Here is not at least, from office move perspective, I know the years that I was in Redmond, I think one year that I had 3 different offices within 1 year, so, I think over that 11 years that I was in Redmond, it was at least 15 times or more, I took my boxes , to my new offices, I just took my 1 box with the most critical things that I put on my desk, but the next time when I more offices, if some of the boxes I haven’t used yet, I just threw them away (laugh). Actually I have about 12 boxes, then moved down to 3. (laugh) That’s maybe more flexible to move to the next office. (laugh)

Microsoft is a big organization, when I started at Microsoft, there were about 4,500 people now it’s about 75,000 people so changes will happen, and we are not going to stop them, so what we can do is to be ready for it.

Mentor

Hopefully all of you will just be assigned a mentor, that’s actually really key that’s one of the thing, in some areas, actually , almost more important, than do the training, if you have a mentor you can just quickly go and say, oh, can you help me with this, I wrote this code, that I can’t figure out why it doesn’t wok, my mentor can say, well have you thought about the threading model you are using, that mentor can really teach me a lot, you know I talked to my boss, my boss says something that doesn’t make sense to me, then you might go to your mentor as well and he says oh well that’s because he or she means xyz, because they have been along longer so they understand the culture.

Make sure that if you are not getting a mentor assigned to you, that talk to your boss and ask for somebody can really help you in your job because that really is important.

So, I have spoken a lot. Here at Microsoft, it’s an incredible company, it really takes care of the employees, there are so many opportunities here for all of us, and you really you can have the right attitude, the right passion, and make sure your working on the things your really interested then you will have a long and fruitful career, thank you.

tags: career life career advice

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