Microsoft: 1 Year in, how's it going?

Hello Dear Reader, one year ago today it was leap year, February 29th 2016. So I'm a year older, the big four zero.... 40.  A little wiser?  Maybe.

Despite my New Year's resolution to get fatter and work out less, I've lost 21 pounds and I'm working out 3-5 times a week.  CURSE YOU NEW YEARS RESOLUTIONS!!!  YOU NEVER COME TRUE!!!!

Also I left my old job as a Data Platform Lead, ie 'Executive Manager', and went back into the field as a Premier Services for Developer Consultant.  Oh and I did this by going to work for Microsoft.

That's right Microsoft.

"So Balls", you say "Is this Micro-soft that makes the ultra-micro-soft pillow cases? or is this the REAL Microsoft?"

Good question Dear Reader!  Yes this is the real deal.  I really work for Microsoft, also I feel the need to smile whenever I say that.

WAS THIS THE RIGHT DECISION?
I don't want to make this seem like being an executive or a manager were a bad experience.  They were not.  I love the people who were on my team at Pragmatic Works.  Some have left, some have stayed, and others joined Microsoft.  I love the people I worked with, and I still do.

I would relish the chance to Manage again, but it would have to be the right scenario.  I was asked to manage teams many times in my career before PW.  I refused.  It wasn't that I didn't want to.  I knew that if I had to lead the team I was a part of, I would have to fire the slackers who were my friends get rid of some people that I knew and hire new people.  PW was the first place where I was working with a dedicated and talented group that was amazing from top to bottom.

Adam Jorgensen (@WAdamJ), who has probably changed his twitter handle.....again...... the second I linked to it in a blog post, was a FANTASTIC boss, mentor, and friend.  There are a few habits I picked up from Adam that continue to help me.

My first year I felt like I was spinning my wheels.  I was more efficient, but I was still doing some of the same things and didn't know a better way to do it.  Adam asked me how many books I read on SQL when that was my field.  I stopped to count and he said, "A lot right?  The number doesn't matter.  It's the concept.  You read a lot, studied more, and experimented to become an expert right?".  He was right*.    He then asked me, "How many books have you read on management?"  I was floored.  But I also didn't know what to read.

Adam created a spreadsheet that had a lot of book recommendations.  He gave it to me in a spreadsheet and prioritized what he felt the most important books where.  Some I loved, some I make everyone read, and others... were terrible.

I learned, I grew.  I liked it.  I also realized what kind of management books I enjoyed and that lead me to more books, more ideas, more new concepts.

Moving from a Consultant to a Manager was like moving from a wide receiver or running back to a Football Coach.  You don't play on the field.  You put people in place to play positions, you can even put a talented lead consultant in the field, your quarterback, by you don't do the work.  That's not your job.

You do the opposition research now.  What does the field look like?  What is the goal?  How do we develop the right tools so our team can win?

Going back to being a position player was a little scary.  I never gave up being technical, but I didn't know if I would enjoy it like I used to.
 
*By the way Adam likes it when you agree with him try to do that.  But don't tell him that's why you are doing that, for some reason he doesn't like that.

SO HOW DO YOU LIKE IT?

I love it.  I love this job.  I sometimes pinch myself.  I've called my friend Jorge Segarra (@SQLChicken) sometimes just to thank him.  My thank you generally starts something like this, "Dear Sir, Thank You for you kindness, generous patience, and pure grit for the number of times you called me, asked me to join you, and for all the times I said NO.  Thank you for not giving up on me."

I could go on and on, but let's start to break down what is so great.  I didn't number these, because it's hard.  I tried.  I picked my top five.  There were more.  I ordered, re-ordered, and then said the heck with it.  So here they are.  The Corporate Culture, Freedom, My Managers, Health Benefits & Corporate Giving, and The Ability to Grow as a Professional.

The Corporate Culture.  The company is driven by a Growth Mindset, you've seen these changes.  The quality of products are better.  The collaboration is better.  It's no longer Microsoft vs. the world.  Gone are the days when your Microsoft app works great as long as you use additional Microsoft products X, Y, and Z and woe-be-on-to-you if you used anything non-Microsoft.

This all comes from a growth mindset of our Senior Leadership Team that views different competitive advantages as challenges to get better.  The recognition that a Microsoft product is not always the best answer, and the zeal to learn from competitors and our mistakes to constantly grow.  We aren't just sitting still here.  There is constant progress to be made, it starts with reinventing ourselves with a clear mission dedicated to help others achieve more.    

Freedom.  Freedom is a great and scary thing.  It means that I get to be responsible for me and my time, but it also means I am responsible.  My manager doesn't care if I'm at my desk.  If I'm on the road two weeks in a row I may have an errand to run in the middle of the day.  He's not constantly checking up on me.  He encourages me to be active on social media, trusts that I will perform for my client and job, and allows me to manage that myself.  The expectation is that I'm a responsible professional, and I get treated that way.  It's simple, but pretty darn revolutionary given what I've experienced throughout most of my professional career.  I pick my engagements, I pick my schedule, and I pick where and when I travel.

The Health Care Benefits & Corporate Giving.  I not going to go into the benefits.  Its not that I couldn't talk about some of them, but I don't want to accidentally cross any lines.  I typically discount benefits in negotiations.  Company X will say, take this job because we offer this, and this accounts to us paying this much money.  I've been at plenty of companies with "GREAT HEALTHCARE OPTIONS".  None of them come close to crazy good benefits.  Companies use them as negotiating tools.  I discount them because at the end of the day none of them were much better than the others.  That is until this one.  If you've ever worked at Microsoft you know they are crazy good.  I don't know if the people who have worked at Microsoft their whole careers realize how good they have it.  Personally, I'm extremely satisfied.

The Corporate culture of giving is also amazing.  A couple of times a year the whole company spends lots of free time volunteering, creating, and offering up things for others to purchase just to give the profits to charity.  We have multiple giving campaigns and Microsoft matches what you give up to over $10,000 per employee.  There are whole charities that have great causes from building sustainable housing for those in need, to raising money for cures to diseases and prevention, to disaster relief.  Some of them almost entirely funded internally by Microsoft employees.  This is selflessness at its very best.  There are so many people here doing good you cannot help but be inspired by example or by proxy.  I feel very strongly about this, because Microsoft does not beat their chest and say "Look how great we are!", if you didn't see this from the inside you may not even know it occurs.  This culture has been around since they existed.  This is built into the place.  Watching people do amazing things, and knowing my 'work' helps bring in revenue that in turn is donated to these great causes in some way, shape, or form is inspiring.

The Managers.  I have two managers.  One that I directly report to, but they both have decided to co-own our group.  Remember all the good things I said about my friend Adam.  Take that, wrap it in Microsoft culture, and put almost two decades of experience behind it.  They manage a team of All Stars from App Platform to Data all with a developer focus.  I've worked with some of these folks before, and even managed some of them.

To see them thrive in this environment helps me see places where at PW I could have done better, or how things could have been done for the better.  It is a very interesting learning experience.  I managed Bradley Schacht (@BradleySchacht), Jorge Segarra, Josh Luedeman (@JoshLuedeman), Gareth Swanepoel (@GarethSwan), and others are at Microsoft now.  All thriving.  It is a very cool thing to watch, to see new managers get the chance to work with them.

The really great thing is my Managers realizes this.  We talk often as Managers and I'm asked for feedback and perspective.  When I have it I give it, when they deserve praise I give that as well.  The best feeling is the mutual respect that is given.  Never once have I heard the phrase, "Well things are different here you aren't at <insert former job> you are at Microsoft and we do things this way".  That comes from the corporate culture, and is embodied by how we communicate.  There is always respect and a desire to learn what we can from different experiences.  My managers are really incredible, and it inspires me even for when my next opportunity to lead presents itself.  Dan and Niel, Thank you both!

The Ability to Grow as a Professional.   One of my first conversations with Niel during my on-boarding was about how to find my next job at Microsoft.  I thought, "Well that interview must have not gone as well as I thought this guy already wants to get rid of me!"  The conversation revolved around finding a manager that inspires you.  Finding someone that you want to work with, and making sure that the fit is right.  The best part about the conversation was realizing here I am on my first day, and my manager believes in me so much that he's already trying to help me figure out what will be my next step at Microsoft.  Internally I've watched people I admire transition from CSS to the Tiger Team or to the SQL Server Product Group or from the Product Group to AzureCAT.  The fact is as long as you want to grow as a professional, you have a place to go within Microsoft.  I didn't even mention the massive investments they make to help each of us grow technically, but I'm starting to run a bit long and if you've hung in there I appreciate your time.


WRAP IT UP

Dear Reader, I'm home.  I hope to be here for as long as I can.

As always, Thank You for stopping by.

Thanks,

Brad

Looking Out for Others Helps You Lead

I'm sitting on a plane. I'm in an exit row, still a big guy in a little seat. I go to sit down and notice the seat to my left has water on the seat. Not so deep that it is a puddle. 5 to 10 big drops. Enough that you wouldn't want to sit in it. The person who this seat will belong to hasn't made an appearance yet.

I sit down and try to politely wave and smile at a flight attendant to get her attention. I think she sees me, but she doesn't respond by acknowledging me.  I want to fix this before the seat is filled.

It would be a rotten way to start a trip by finding tour seat with water on it. It's a modern conundrum.  How do I attract attention on a plane when the line is boarding, while not becoming that guy who attracts the wrong kind of attention.

I wave again and try to smile as I think I am acknowledged.  Still didn't work.

The call attendant light!  That's the ticket. I hit my button, eyes locked on the flight attendant. BINGO!  She sees me.

She mouth the words from across the plane, "Did you push the button?".

"Yes", I mouth back.

"Hit the button again", she says across the plane.

Okay I think, now I can simply point this out and get it taken care of. The water will be cleaned up. Everything will be right and in order before the seat gets filled. Wrong.

After I turn off the light the flight attendant goes back to talking with the people at the front of the plane. She must have assumed I did it on accident. Again I am discouraged.  I mean it's not even my seat. If I just wait when the person arrives they can hold up the line and at that point it will have to be fixed.

I can't leave it like that.

It is something simple, but it is so much more than that.  As a kid I loved Superman. I was always a fan. I probably slept in a cape more times than I didn't. I tried too, at least. My Mom was convinced that I would strangle myself in my sleep, if she caught me wearing one she would make me take it off.  And I would. Until she left the room.

Link to original

The thing about Superman was he helped people. That was important, even as a child I knew this. I think at that age we all do. We are supposed to look out for other people. We should help them. As an adult we tend to get jaded about that.

We realize there is only so much that we can do. We can't help everyone.  We cannot donate all of our time or all of our money to charity if we have a family or children at home. It wouldn't be wise, as a matter of fact that would be wrong.  We have to take care of our families first.  So we begin to make realizations over time. The innocence of our childhood fade away.  We realize we cannot save everyone.

During my brief time as a football coach for my boys a couple years ago I had a phrase I fell in love with. You play how you practice, you practice how you play.  Simple but true.

I still tell my kids that on a weekly if not daily basis. If you have a good strong work ethic at practice you carry that over to the game. If you quit at practice you will probably quit in the game. If you are sloppy at home or lazy about getting things done... you practice how you play.

If we cannot look out for others over simple things, how can be expected to look out for our coworkers, our customers, or our clients.  It's simple, but it is more than that. We have a responsibility to make the world better.

Period. Not just better in business. Better.  Period. End of sentence.  It doesn't matter if the goal is to lead employees, a team, or any effort that we under take in life.  We have the chance to effect change for the better in every action we take.   We can act with others in mind, and by doing so we will make things better for them.  You practice how you play.

This thought was fresh in my head because of work.

I lead a team of highly skilled highly talented consultants. We love fresh and new ideas. At Pragmatic Works, my job, we have had a very innovative approach to raises and reviews that allowed people to control their own destiny. Like many ideas it looked good on paper, but after several years we could see cracks in the system.

For the past four months we've been working to replace to old and determine the new. This isn't new to us.  Every year we take the feedback from our teams and we look at how we can do things better, how we can make changes that benefit us personally and professionally.  However, this year marked our largest set of changes we've introduced since I've been with the company.

The core thing that drove us was how we would grow, encourage, and support our team.  How do we help them?  Not just internally for the company, but how do we help them technically and professionally.  If people are here for years or only a short while, the goal is to help them leave better than when they arrived.  We need to help make you better.  As leaders for our company it is our job to help our employees.  Period.

We sat down with people and had a lot of 1 on 1 meetings discussing ideas and asking for feedback.

We took that feedback and kept some things and threw out others. We increased vacation, changed the review process, increased the benefits to help people be active in the SQL Community, and other technology communities.  We are working on redoing our mentoring program and some other very cool things to help people grow.


After all if you are in the business of helping people, which we are; what good are you if you cannot help the people who work for you.  You practice how you play.

"So Balls", you say.  "There was this water in a seat...."

Thank you Dear Reader.   So I stood up, waved to the flight attendant, and in my most polite southern accent I asked if I could get a napkin to clean up the water in the seat next to me.


She walk over to me with a puzzled look, as though I had spoken is some foreign tongue. As we both looked at the water she realized why I had been waving. She rushed off to get a couple napkins to clean it up. About 20 minutes later I began to laugh inside.  The seat next to me was still empty.

What if it was all for nothing and no one sat down.

Before long an elderly woman boarded late and took the seat next to me. Her seat was nice and dry.  I think my kids would be happy with me, after all you practice how you play.

As always Dear Reader Thank you for stopping by.

Thanks,

Brad

When the Problem is Not Them. It’s You.

Hello Dear Reader!  I’ve been the Data Platform Management Lead at Pragmatic Works for almost two years now.  It’s been an interesting journey that I’m enjoying.  I’m the tier 3 support in a lot of cases, play the role of manager, mentor, and fellow fighter in the trenches when required.  Today I wanted to write about something that deals with professional development.

In IT facts are facts, data is data, things perform well or they do not.  All of this leads to trust.  I do a lot of presentations on the Internals of SQL Server.  It is a fun and topic I enjoy it. *cough* nerd alert *cough*.  I do this not just for fun, but because knowledge is powerful.  It gives me the ability to let my clients have confidence that I understand what I’m talking about.  Very rare are any instances where I have been paid when I actually needed to flip hex to decimal and look through the binary that was produced.  The ability to display that knowledge when needed is crucial to ensuring you’ve got a second shot when you need it.

Projects, jobs, and opportunities come and go.  I’ve seen cases of spectacular success.  As anyone who has experienced success well knows, the path is littered with those who have failed before you.  Some projects are easy, some are hard.  All can be successful, but you have to have the right mindset.  When projects do fail it can be for a variety of reasons, typically it comes down to poor communication. 

I could be the typical marketing magazine and now list out ways projects fail, how communication is important, but Dear Reader you deserve better.  What you really want to know is how you fix it.  

IS IT TOO LATE FOR A RETRY

Unless all trust is gone it’s not too late.  When you are walking out the door, or being asked to walk out the door it is too late.  As long as you are still on the team, you should take that as validation to be part of the process.  In business everyone wants to be successful.  Everyone wants to win.  If you can help with that, then it is never too late.

The Upgrade Part 1

I was with a billion dollar company and we were upgrading their SQL Server boxes for their main application that the entire business ran off of from SQL Server 2000 to 2008 R2.  We had a very well thought out project plan, an itemized list and timeline of what needed to occur, and over 100 people including a team of VP’s that were on hand to monitor the event.  Leading up to it we hit a pretty big snag.

We were migrating the users from SQL Server 2000 to 2008 R2 and an odd thing happened.  The logins stopped working.  We caught it in Staging.  There was another consulting company that was also working with my client.  Often you will work with consultants or contractors for many different organizations, and you have solid and good relationships.  This was not one of those cases.  

The competing company took this opportunity to state very loudly that I didn’t know what I was doing.  That we could not just go from SQL 2000 to 2008 R2.  The hash had changed for logins, and you had to stutter step to SQL Server 2005, then re-export the logins to SQL 2008 R2.  This added an increased level of complexity, and threatened to blow our timeline.  I left the office dejected and the client questioning my experience.

You don't want to do IT.
You want to go home and rethink your life.

The EDW Part 1

I was with a client in the financial industry.  The mission to help pull data from a database, not SQL Server, to a new Enterprise Data Warehouse (EDW).  The plan would have us pull from our Online Transaction Processing (OLTP) system to move the data over.  They already had an Online Analytical Processing (OLAP) DW.  The data was Extracted, Transformed, and Loaded (ETL) from the OLTP system to the OLAP system.  The columns where not the same, they didn’t match up fully.  This was using a 3^rd party product so we didn’t have full visibility into the data mappings.

The business trusted the OLAP system.  Even though the OLTP was the source, they wanted us to validate our imported data against the OLAP, not the business rules and calculations provided to us using the raw OLTP data.

I didn’t agree with this approach.  A source system of this type that had pure 100% financial data, that financial decisions were made off of daily, should be the trusted source.  We should not be replicating the OLAP data but finding that the business calculations produced, validating them off of the source data and moving that data.  After many meetings on this subject I found myself in a room with the entire project team.  I realized that I was the only one passionately arguing this point of view.  In fact I found everyone was unified in one direction.  That direction was that I was wrong.

FIXING THE ISSUE (YOU)

Once you have realized that you are the issue the next step is to find a way to reestablish trust.  Learning, adapting, and putting the goals of team forward showing you can be a productive member goes a long way.

The Upgrade Part 2

When I started thinking about the issue I knew I wasn’t wrong.  Either that or I had gotten unbelievably lucky for every upgrade from 2000 to 200x that I’ve ever done.  Either way I wanted to know which it was.  If I had been lucky, well let's just say I would have a lot of phone calls I would need to make.

In order to be sure it was time to take a close look at the Microsoft provided scripts for transferring logins for SQL 2000 and guidance for SQL 2005 and up.  What I found was that the hash output was indeed different.  To test this I stood up a SQL 2000 box, made a user and a password and exported them.  I did the same on SQL 2005.  There were differences.  The length was different.  The 2000 scripts generated a password hash that was 102 characters long.  The 2005 and up were only 42 characters long.  Then it struck me those characters matched the SQL 2000 output exactally.

I used the SQL 2000 script to transfer the user to a SQL 2008 R2 instance.  Then I logged on as the user.  It worked.  I deleted the user, and ran the 2005 scripts.  It worked.  Those 42 characters were the important part.  That didn’t solve my issue with the client.  Our passwords were not working.  On a wild hare it struck me that the passwords were all lower case.  I tried camel casing them.  They worked.  I found by default that SQL 2000 passwords were case insensitive.

Poor password management had led them to record the passwords as lower case.  The hash had saved the camel case, and on export had enforced it by default on 2005 and up.  I brought this to my client the next day.  We realized that the passwords they had stored were not always correct.  In order to fix this we had to reset and update every application and it’s password before we could proceed. 

We did, and the upgrade rolled on.

The EDW Part 2

I stood at the front of the room and realized every eye was on me.  I realized that the business firmly believed in the process they had laid out.  I also realized, I was the only one not on board.  This was a definitive moment.  I could stand my ground, but very quickly I could see that would lead me off this project.  Failure is not an option.  So I went for option 3.

The process of not trusting the source is, and this is an understatement, not good.  Even with that staring me down, I could see an opportunity.  If I was onboard with the plan, I could work from the inside to validate that the source data was what we needed.

So I did just that.  I wasn’t excited, but I smiled big.  I wasn’t 100% convinced, but I threw in my hat, hard work, and rolled up my sleeves.  That first day the grin on my face may have been strained, by the end of the next 4 weeks it wouldn’t be at all.

We didn’t have all the business rules or the ETL logic for the 3^rd party data warehouse that the business trusted.  The people in the room knew that.  They were committed to getting this right, and putting the puzzle pieces together.  The process would be painstaking, but as I made my change of heart and discussed the validation we would need to do, mapping documents we would need to create, business logic we would need to confirm, validate, and how we would validate the imports it started to come together.

PULLING IT ALL TOGETHER

“So Balls,” you say, “That’s great that you fixed it. How do we fix it?”

Great question Dear Reader.  These stories both had a positive outcome.  They happened because I didn’t give up, and I continued to work to help the team succeed.  I don’t want to paint this as if I’m never wrong.  Just ask Adam Jorgensen (@AJBigdata | Blog), he’ll tell you that I’m wrong quite often.  I’ve also blogged about learning from mistakes, mistakes are important.  Be humble in the way you interact and listen to people.  People who believe they are never wrong, suffer defeat far worse than those of us that recognize it as part of growing.  

 

If I was wrong about the passwords from 2000 to 200x I wanted to know.  I wanted to understand why, and what we could do to fix it.  Had I been wrong, I would have sung it from the mountain tops.  I would have blogged on it and gladly advised people on it.  Instead I found the answer I was looking for and the logic to back it up, I share that just as freely as I would have my failure.

When everyone is fully committed to an idea that you do not agree with instead of assuming they are wrong, consider that you are.  It changed my point of view on the project.  It allowed me to embrace a team that wanted someone to take them on the path towards success and be part of that team.  It also reinforced a very simple fact, I am not always right and I need to listen to others.

In each case you have to want to achieve the end goal, and that has to be more important than being right.

As always Dear Reader, thanks for stopping by!

Thanks,

Brad