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Freedo & his space

Career advice - from executive speech (1)

I just finished the NEO training and yesterday, general manager of WLC (Windows Live China) gave the speech which is interesting and meaningful, meanwhile.
Some brief info:
Loves cars (got collections of ford 1935) & water skiing (it’s real, showed us the pictures).
Previously from Motorola, and joined Microsoft with a plan to stay maybe five years, then found himself can not leave Microsoft. He’s been with Microsoft for 16 years when we got only about 4,000 employees and still in era of windows 3.0.

Before moving on, just want to update, this article is not originally sent by him, I just do a fast recording and after that recalled from my memory, so, not ensure the accuracy of 100%.

Usually I’m not a fast thinker, I’m used to think while talking, that means I’m not a fast talker either. What I’m used to do is, on speech or training, I don’t ask frequently, instead, I try to recall & think over again about the contents, not long time after, maybe one or two days, and I found which is very helpful to learn more.
The article will be separated in several, just try to attract you for browsing & visiting a lot :-P

Career advice (practical things)

Working hard

(Laughing) When I think about working hard, I actually really don’t mean you should work 20 hours a day.
When you at work, make sure you work hard, and also think about work really efficiently. You are finding everyday you spending one hour doing some task, and think about why you doing that task everyday and could you automate that task and that will spend 5 minutes a day, and could spend the other 55 minutes doing something else.
Work hard when you are here but don’t work 20 hours a day, because after a while you feel so tired, that’s not sustainable and it’s not going to help you in the long round.

So it’s really about working efficiently.

Playing hard

(Laughing) At Microsoft, that we actually do a pretty good job, doing a lot morale activities.
Here in China, go play soccer, ping pang, badminton, do whatever, and really take time to take vacation. You know for the first seven years at Microsoft, I really don’t take any vacation, I just work & work really hard, and then I realized that I feel so tired, you know, even can not be efficient.

So work hard and play hard as well.

Passion for technology/customer
Make an example, you go to a party, somebody comes after you said oh I really don’t like windows, you know I can’t do whatever, you know(Laughing).
I honestly hope, even you don’t really working on windows, even you working on SQL or small server or whatever, that really bothers you, I wonder how can I help this person, if I can take that issue and send this to SQL team that they could help that person, to try make that person experience with Microsoft and make Microsoft product better.

It’s not about saying oh, yeah, I really hate windows either you know. Oh yeah, even Microsoft people don’t like Microsoft product. (Laughing) so…

When new technology comes out and Make sure you looking at and interested in.
How that technology might be helpful in your job
Maybe something you should think about, in cooperating in your work.
People start talking about test development, process development, I hope that, wow , I need to know more about that, whether you are developer/tester or program manager, I wonder if that will help me in be more efficient in what I do.

Always be learning.

Be proactive

If you are a developer, somebody find a bug in your code, then okay, when I do A and B and C and then this happens, so you look at your code and said oh, I know exactly what you said, ok boom, I gonna fixed that, great now and that won’t happen any more.

That was just doing that?
Think about If I do A B ad C and this happens, I wonder if I just do A C and B, oh, wow, that might be a problem also, so, don’t only think about one scenario, but also look around and see if there are any other issues.
That’s really I can see a big difference in the people that they are no not successful than others.

Be willing to go beyond that, and I think that maybe goes a long way, that also shows your manager that you are always willing to take another thing always looking after big picture. And which will help you in your career.

Making hard decision

To a manager, individual contributor, to everybody is the same thing.
If you product is shipping next week, and you realize that one feature that you been working on is not going to work, immediate right decision is to say, well I think that feature is not just going to ship, sometimes it’s a very very tough, so really just be willing to look at , making some hard decisions that will do the best to the company.

Similarly, you have a deadline coming on, make it next Friday. You working hard, try to meet deadline, and Wednesday, Thursday and Friday comes along.

And I’m not gonna make it, that’ bad.
Will be much better to say, you know, today is Friday, I don’t think I can make it, to my manager, because then my manager will say, well, what’s the problem, can help or even have somebody else could take a look, whatever, then it’s possible to do something to meet your deadline.

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@ 20070712 07:16:00 with 0 comments