Making it big in software (ibm post doctoral fellow symposium keynote slideshare)
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Sam Lightstone discusses the evolving landscape of software and the volume of data, emphasizing the importance of technical leadership and the qualities needed to become a distinguished engineer. He shares insights on career advancement, the significance of working on enjoyable projects, and the value of differentiating oneself in competition. Additionally, he highlights the importance of goal-centric time management, measuring contributions, and the challenges faced by innovators and startups in the tech industry.
![Sam Lightstone10
Kuh-ching!!!
Perhaps obvious, but the most
successful people earn considerably
more money. As a new graduate this
may not be to of mind. As you get older,
and life responsibilities increase [house,
school fees, growing family, retirement
planning] this becomes more important.](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/makingitbiginsoftwareibmpostdoctoralfellowsymposiumkeynoteslideshare-160718230550/85/Making-it-big-in-software-ibm-post-doctoral-fellow-symposium-keynote-slideshare-10-320.jpg)
Making it big in software (ibm post doctoral fellow symposium keynote slideshare)
- 1. Sam Lightstone1 Making it Big in Software Sam Lightstone Distinguished Engineer & IBM Master Inventor IBM Canada e-mail: light@ca.ibm.com IBM Post-Doctoral Fellow Symposium Keynote University of Toronto
- 2. Sam Lightstone2 Ideas in this lecture are a sample drawn from this book
- 3. Sam Lightstone3 Software is the place to be Data and devices are proliforating The world has ~7 billion people 13 billion connected devices. 15 Petabytes of data daily. In 2014 the volume of data created by U.S. companies alone will be enough to fill ten thousand Libraries of Congress. By 2020 35 Zettabytes of data will flow over the Internet (that’s a stack of books from here to Pluto 20 times) Virtually every device that consumes direct current electricity also requires electrical and computer engineering. Our world is increasingly interconnected, automated and interactive.
- 4. Sam Lightstone4 A world of unexpected technology success
- 5. Sam Lightstone5 What it takes to become a Senior Technical Staff Member or Distinguished Engineer (Sam’s unofficial thoughts) Evaluated by executives beyond your product group It’s not only up to your boss It’s not only up to you boss’s boss You need to demonstrate a portfolio of success Technical successes Organizational technical leadership Cross product activity and leadership Customer activity Support for sales and closing business Publications and patents Corporate awards Activity with IBM Research or University research helps ~ Distilling the Requirements ~ Distinguished Engineer: • An industry leader. • Recognized broadly outside of IBM • Technical Leadership to > 100 engineers • Helped create an entire product or industry (hundreds of millions of dollars attributed to your work) Senior Technical Staff Member • An IBM division leader. • Recognized broadly inside IBM across divisions • Technical Leadership to > 25 engineers • Helped create major product enhancements (tends of millions of dollars attributed to your work)
- 6. Sam Lightstone6 16 Not so obvious thoughts about your future (loosely grouped)
- 7. Sam Lightstone7 Career Context Career Planning Social Dynamics
- 9. Sam Lightstone9 Idea #1: Freedom Seniority gives you influence over What you work on Where you work (to a lesser degree) when you work š The Jim Gray story The late computer scientist Jim Gray, was one of the founders of modern database systems and a leader in scalable computing before his mysterious disappearance in a boating accident on a clear, calm day in 2007. Before recruiting Gray, Microsoft had always resisted the pressure to establish R&D sites outside of their core location in Redmond, Washington. Gray just wasn’t interested in living there. No problem. In 1995, they built their new laboratory, called the Microsoft Bay Area Research Center (BARC), around him. Some may believe that Microsoft had decided to finally tap into the incredible pool of software talent and dynamism in the Bay area, but in truth, the move to open BARC was motivated heavily by a desire to attract Gray to Microsoft. According to Senior Vice President of Microsoft Research Rick Rashid, “If Jim had wanted a lab in Monte Carlo, we would have built a lab in Monte Carlo.” (Extract from “Making it Big in Software”) Consider the story of Jim Gray, on the right. Microsoft approached him. He refused because of location concerns, and they agreed to build the Bay Area Research Center in California around him. That is the power to work not only on what you want, but where you want.
- 10. Sam Lightstone10 Kuh-ching!!! Perhaps obvious, but the most successful people earn considerably more money. As a new graduate this may not be to of mind. As you get older, and life responsibilities increase [house, school fees, growing family, retirement planning] this becomes more important.
- 11. Sam Lightstone11 Idea #2: School versus job: Professionalism work is the opposite of school work! SCHOOL JOB Do your own work or you are expelled Fixed workload Constant feedback Obedience – do what is asked Master what is known Collaborate or you are fired Unstructured workload Infrequent feedback Create what doesn’t yet exist Initiative – offer what is needed Focus on fairness Focus on creating value
- 12. Sam Lightstone12 Idea #3: Who is often more important than what(from Making it Big in Software: Get the job. Work the org. Become great.) “Try to work with the smartest people you can find, since they challenge you to think and work better…. When you work with really top-notch, smart engineers, it will fundamentally change the way you think and the way you program.” -Marissa Mayer, VP, Search Products, Google Inc. Who you work with Who you work for “…always make sure you’re in an environment that leaves you feeling empowered to fully use your talents, and that you feel appreciated for the work you do.” - Diane Greene, Co-founder and past CEO of VMWare
- 13. Sam Lightstone13 Idea #4: The centrality of fun You will always perform your best, be your most productive, and impress others most when you are working on something you enjoy.
- 14. Sam Lightstone14 The gurus all agree(quotes from “Making it Big in Software: Get the job. Work the org. Become great.”) “Find something that you really love doing and get excited about doing, so that you almost feel as if you should be paying them to come to work. I think you need to be happy to be successful, not successful to be happy.” —David Vaskevitch, Microsoft CTO “Be sure that you like what you do at work and that you like the people you work with—you’ll have to live with them for a long time.” —Bjarne Stroustrup, inventor of C++ “The more you can merge what you want to do with your job, the better.” —Steve Wozniak, inventor of the Apple computer “I believe that I just work better if I enjoy what I’m doing. I suspect that if anybody wants to be ‘the best’ at whatever they do, they have to realize that it takes decades of hard work. And the main way to actually keep doing decades of hard work is to simply enjoy it so much that you don’t want to stop.” —Linus Torvalds, original author of GNU/Linux “…follow your passion. Most of all, be sure you have fun in the process.” —Grady Booch, IBM Fellow “…if you can find a job that you really like, the better you’re gonna be. You’re gonna be more productive. You’re going to be happier. You’re going to be more satisfied in general with what’s going on.” —Ray Tomlinson, inventor of email “Follow your bliss.” —Jon Bentley, author of Programming Pearls “For me, work is really enjoyable, making it hard to define where work ends and fun begins.” —Marissa Mayer, Google VP “That’s what’s great—my career is a lot of fun. I don’t view it as work. Computers have always been my hobby. The fact that I get to go to work and work on my hobby and get paid for it is just fantastic.” —Mark Russinovich, Microsoft Technical Fellow “What is really important is to make sure that they are growing, contributing, and enjoying what they do.” —John Schwarz, CEO Business Objects “My number one piece of advice is to have fun.” —James Gosling, inventor of Java, Sun VP and Fellow Remarkably, most of the industry gurus I interviewed for the book “Making it Big in Software” cited “fun” and doing what you love as a central criteria for success.
- 16. Sam Lightstone16 Idea #5: Be distinguished (and distinguishable) (Data from Making it Big in Software: Get the job. Work the org. Become great.) You may, unwisely, think your career prospects lie in developing expertise in the most popular programming languages and technical skills. But popularity also means competition. Is that necessarily the place to compete?
- 17. Sam Lightstone17 Idea #5: Differentiate yourself. Try to differentiate yourself. For example, when Java exploded in the mid-1990s, everybody became a Java programmer, and the market became flooded with cookie-cutter Java programmers. It’s really hard for people to stand out as something that isn’t easily replaceable in that world. My whole career I have tried to stay away from that. Operating system internals, while not considered particularly sexy or part of the mainstream, have allowed me to stand out because of the relatively few people who go into that and the perception “Wow, that’s really hard.” Stay away from the mainstream and the crowds, and find something that is gonna be stable—not just flash- in-the-pan technology. Mark Russinovich Microsoft Technical Fellow, Windows Architect
- 18. Sam Lightstone18 Idea #6: Goal centric time management Imagine you are dropped into this scene with a canoe and a paddle. A disembodied voice says to you… “Go”. You are dropped into a canoe in this breathtaking scene, and a disembodied voice say “Go! It’s urgent you must proceed now!”. You look forward, backwards, left and right. All directions look equally probable. You call out “Where?! Where should I go?” There is no reply. You pick a direction somewhat arbitrarily and paddle off not knowing what to find. The lake is a metaphor for your career. How likely are you to arrive at the ideal destination if you don’t first define what that is? Like driving to work, or going on a road trip, heading off in a random direction is a pretty weak strategy. Define first where you are headed, and you are much more likely to arrive!
- 19. Sam Lightstone19 A classic business analogy on time management. A professor walks into a class and places a glass jug on the table in front of him. He asks his class whether the jog is empty of full – and everyone agrees that (aside from air) the jus empty. He then pulls out several large rocks and places as many rocks as possible into the jar. He asks the class whether the jug is empty or full. A mixed reaction – some point out there are still spaces between the rocks. The professor takes out a large sack of sand, and proceeds to pour as much sand as possible into the jar. The students are on to him with the “space between things” and refuse to accept that the jug is truly full. The professor then takes out a pitcher of water, and pours as much water as possible in the jug, until the jug is completely overflowing with rocks, sand and water. At this point everyone agrees the jug is full to the max. Professor: “The jug is a metaphor for how you manage your time. With that in mind, what was the point of this demonstration” Eager student: “Just like there were spaces between the big rocks for sand and water, similarly if we really manage our time well, we can fit a lot more productivity into our day”. Professor: “Exactly the opposite! The real point is this – if we had started with the sand and the water, we never would have had space for the big rocks! Those big rocks are the big important things in your life. Make sure you prioritize them first. There is always a lot of sand and water, the unimportant things, to fill your day if you let it.”
- 20. Sam Lightstone20 Idea #7: The Value of Measuring Value RD, Marketing, Sales work to bring new technology to market 1. Improve performance 2. Improve reliability 3. Make something easier 4. Make the impossible possible Society has trained us to understand “new and improved” means anything from life changing breakthrough, to barely measurable. Usually the latter. Much of what we do in high tech is intended to create new technology that improves performance, makes technology more reliable, increases simplicity, and if we are really lucky makes the once impossible now possible. In short, we make technology that is “New improved”. Unfortunately, “New Improved” sounds like an advertisement for laundry detergent! The career challenge: Describe your contributions in concrete ways that strongly convey the real value.
- 21. Sam Lightstone21 Idea #7: The Value of Measuring Value A multitude of benefits: 1. Quantify value for your customers 2. Quantify your success inside your own company 3. Improve marketing. 4. Demystify your product planning. 5. Raise team morale. 0% 20% 40% 60% 80% 100% % of code A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R Companies Supported Statements Unsupported Statements A 2008 measurement of database language compatibility measured across 18 customer workloads. By measuring the improvements the new capabilities were transformed from simple “new and improved features” (sounds like laundry detergent) to a whopping 98% improvement that buoyed the spirits of the engineering team, fuelled new marketing programs, and had real quantified meaning to customers. 98% compatibility
- 22. Sam Lightstone22 Idea #8: Why new projects startups fail (There are many reasons…. this is just one worth reflecting on) Good business needs more than a great idea. Smart startups look for talented business leaders to join them Yes, there are exceptions Mark Zuckerberg (Facebook) Bill Gates (Microsoft) Steve Jobs (Apple) These exceptions are really unfortunate, because they inspire too many innovators with great ideas to think they can also be great business leaders. As a result, great engineers often end up running terrible companies, and fail to transition to success – despite having a great idea and even a great product. A successful business is much more than a great product. You need a successful strategy to bring technology to market, and to attract and retain customers.
- 23. Sam Lightstone23 Idea #9: Invention is easy. Getting stuff done is hard. Inspiration isn’t that rare in the end, but people who have it and then actually follow through… that’s rare.” “My personal pet peeve is how many people think the hard part is in the “big and hard problems” or in some fluffy but important- sounding thing like “innovation.” Linus Torvalds Creator of the Linux kernel In fact, all the real work is in getting the details right. It’s that “1% inspiration, 99% perspiration” thing. People seem to think that inspiration is the much bigger and important part of the two, but I’ve come to believe that while it’s important to have inspiration, where people actually stumble is when they can’t execute on that inspiration.
- 24. Sam Lightstone24 Idea #10: Build Knowledge About Other Fields You can learn a lot of creative approaches by studying the esoteric. In recent years, software innovations related to self-managing software systems have drawn heavily from software techniques in: control theory, economics, cybernetics, and artificial intelligence.
- 25. Sam Lightstone25 Build Knowledge About Other Fields We love our software fonts! Where did they come from? Oh, how we love our fonts! Years ago I worked on font rendering for an image processing product with text overlays. I knew the Windows font rendering APIs inside and out. I was amazed at the time how well engineers had mastered the ancient art of typography. Not exactly a standard course in most computer science or engineering schools. Where did it all come from? Apparently, from Apple co-founder and former CEO Steve Jobs! Steve attended a Reed College, and famously floundered in his first semester. In his second semester he surveyed a course in calligraphy – a particular strong point of the school. Not something he every expected to have much practical use for, but it was interesting, and a good use of time while he was finding himself. Fast forward to the 1980s, and he is leading Apple in the development of the next generation super easy, and user friendly personal computer – the Apple Macintosh. Why keep suffering with green monospace characters on a black screen? It all came back to him - calligraphy, typography, serif and sans serif glyphs, proportional and monospace characters. Once the Mac had these beautiful fonts to select from, Windows had to follow suit. The rest if history. A great example of the power of combining disciplines (in this case software engineering and calligraphy).
- 26. Sam Lightstone26 Idea #11. Don’t Let Users and Markets Dictate How to Do Things “If I'd listened to customers, I'd have given them a faster horse.” --Henry Ford. “A lot of times, people don’t know what they want until you show it to them.” -- Steve Jobs The market is a profound judge The market creates demand and passes judgment. Markets can never predict or request innovation. Henry Ford (July 30, 1863 – April 7, 1947) Founder of the Ford Motor Company. Father of modern assembly lines. His Model T automobile revolutionized transportation.
- 27. Sam Lightstone27 Idea #12. Don’t wait until you’re ready “I grew into the role” Sign of a career that could have been more. Always be ready to stretch and challenge yourself. Evaluate opportunities, in part, by your emotional reaction. 1. Terrified by the scope and risk 2. Nervous about the scope and risk 3. Comfortable for the scope and risk If you aren’t nervous about your next role, you probably waited too long.
- 28. Sam Lightstone28 “… you should always do something that you’re not ready to do. Doing something you’re not ready to do means you’re taking a step forward, you’re going to learn something new, and you’re going to grow.” Marissa Mayer Currently CEO of Yahoo! Inc Then Vice President, Search Products Google Inc. Idea #12. Waiting until you’re ready is waiting too long
- 30. Sam Lightstone30 Idea13: You’ve been hard at work. Perception: “Why doesn’t the management team recognize my contributions? Even my coworkers seem to take my hard work for granted.” Reality: It’s your job to make sure your manager and your teammates know what you’ve accomplished. ~RULE~ Don’t expect recognition for work that nobody knows about.
- 31. Sam Lightstone31 Idea #14: The secret influence of management peers Evaluations Not everyone can be rated high. Not everyone can be rated low. Evaluations are doomed to subjectivity and organizational conflict. Try to keep your boss’s peers informed about your work. Within reason. You manager won’t be able to easily give you a top evaluation without his/ her peers agreeing This consideration is proportional to the size of your organization. ~ RULE ~ It’s difficult to get full recognition for work that only your manager knows about.
- 32. Sam Lightstone32 Idea #15. What goes around comes around So be nice to everyone. Engage in acts of random kindness Be complimentary (sincerely… don’t suck up) Avoid gossip Comparable: children crossing the road What if only 90% of the things you say in private stay private?
- 33. Sam Lightstone33 Idea #16: Vector calculus and burning bridges Everyone in an organization is moving along a career vector. • People accelerate, decelerate over the course of years. • Players come and go. Consequence: • People you work with today who are your peers or juniors may one day be your employee, boss, or control key resources you depend on . Never burn your bridges for short term gain.
- 34. Sam Lightstone34 “It far exceeded my expectations!” Dr. Peter Grogono Professor of Computer Science Concordia University “By far the best career guide I have ever read.” Amazon.com reader Praise for Making it Big in Software “The interviews alone are worth the price of admission.” Eric Lundquist, eWeek.com “ ‘Software is an amazing place to build a career.’ If you agree with this sentiment that opens Sam Lightstone's book you are likely to enjoy reading it and find it motivating.” Sue Gee, i-programmer.com “For me, reading this book was a blissful experience from cover to cover.” Mike Riley, Dr. Dobb’s “… I'm impressed by how empowered I am after reading just the first few chapters! Seriously, I feel like coding the equivalent of punching a bear in the face!” Chris Toohey, Dominoguru.com “I've never seen a book as comprehensive and instantly useful as this one... Seriously, this is the book.“ David J. Steinberg, Executive Vice President and General Manager, Starz Animation “I've never seen a book as comprehensive and instantly useful as this one... Seriously, this is the book.” David J. Steinberg Executive Vice President and General Manager, Starz Animation November 3, 2010 #1 in Books Education Vocational Guidance #1 in Books Business Investing High-Tech #1 in Books Business Investing Vocational
- 35. Sam Lightstone35 Conclusions Your technical skills and brilliance are just the beginning. Technical skills count. Soft skills count The mix is your choice Set your own course. Don’t let the river carry you. Consider the human dynamics of how businesses and organizations work “Be goal-‐oriented... You don’t need to have had courses… Whatever it is, just trust yourself that you don’t need a book— you can write the book. …Keep in mind that almost all the revolu5onary great advances, the big home runs in technology, come from very young people in school or not so many years out of school. You’ve got the energy to follow it through…” -‐-‐ Steve Wozniak, Inventor of the Apple computer, cofounder of Apple Inc. (from Making it Big in SoEware)
- 36. Sam Lightstone36 Making it Big in IBM Sam Lightstone Distinguished Engineer IBM Master Inventor IBM Canada e-mail: light@ca.ibm.com April 14, 2014