Category Archives: Work

Changing Datacenters, Changing IT

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I just finished giving a keynote talk at the Windows Connection conference here in Las Vegas (I’m writing this while waiting to board my plane back home).  My topic is one that I’ve been doing a lot of thinking about – how datacenters going to change and what that means to IT Pros.  I’m passionate about the success of IT Pros and want to give them the tools they need to succeed.  In this case, the tool that they need to succeed is perspective.  The Readers Digest of my talk is: Continue reading →

On Becoming a Senior Technical Individual Contributor

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I’ve done quite a bit of mentoring.  I enjoy it because actually “saying it” forces you to transform your vague ideas into crisp ones.  One of the most frequent issues people want to work through is how to become a senior technical individual contributor (IC).  We all have lots of examples of technical people that go into management and advance their careers.  That model of career advancement is as universal as it is straightforward:  Manage a bunch of people, don’t screw up, ship on time and then do it again at a bigger scope until you stumble and get fired. Continue reading →

Monad Manifesto

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I wrote the  Monad Manifesto in 2002.  I had been working on Monad for over a year at that point and had been relying upon whiteboard conversations and demos in my office to bring people up to speed on what we were doing.  That model didn’t scale well and different people need different forms of information in order to get it.  In particular, we were originally trying to do PowerShell as a distribute development model where we had a few PMs, a Dev Lead (Bruce Payette) and myself working in Redmond and then the development and test teams working at the India Development Center in Hyderabad India.  Continue reading →