Days Till Xmas

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This morning my daughter asked my wife how many days there were until Christmas. That conversation didn’t go so well.  🙂   Seriously though, this year things started super early.  The local store started selling Christmas stuff before Halloween and a couple of weeks ago our neighbors put up their Christmas lights.  I can understand why my daughter is getting whipped up into an Christmas frenzy.  That said, as my wife contemplates a big day of effort for Thanksgiving, I can understand why questions about Christmas are not welcome. Continue reading →

On Rumors

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I often get people asking about this or that rumor.  Invariably my response is, “I’m sure it is true but I wouldn’t worry about it”.  This blog explains that perspective and has nothing to do with any specific rumor.  I hope it will help reduce your anxiety the next time you find yourself confronted with a wave of rumors. Continue reading →

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 →