MyOwnPirateRadio

While working at Microsoft I wrote a few essays on work-related topics. These were all personal essays… no confidential work secrets, just my own rambling thoughts. People still ask me for copies of the essays from time to time, especially the one I’ve republished below, originally titled “What it takes to succeed at Microsoft”. I think it hit home for many people, and not just Microsofties. It’s cheesy, I admit. I hope you’ll agree it holds up pretty well over time.

From: Oshoma Momoh
Sent: Friday, November 15, 2002 3:55 AM
To: DotNET Compact Framework Team - Core

Over the past few months I’ve been in a number of interesting discussions, both with fellow Microsofties and normal earthlings, that have touched on what it takes to be a “success” at Microsoft. These discussions prompted me to write down a list of attributes I have observed in the most successful people I’ve worked with here. (And no, I don’t count myself in this list! I rank myself “mostly harmless”.
I’ve been refining the list; below is my draft so far. I am sharing this with you in the hope you find it interesting, and maybe useful, as it has been for me.

We each have our own personal definition of success. My definition includes things like “happy in what you do”, “widely respected and admired”, and “great contributor and achiever”. This is what I mean when I talk about successful people. You may well have a different definition.

I’ve had the opportunity to work with some truly phenomenal people at Microsoft over the course of seven years here (eight, if you count being an intern). Many of these people are in our immediate organization; these are the folks that inspire us all to come to work each day. Some of these people I worked with on past projects, and still have the pleasure of seeing once in a while. The ones who have left MS, I miss greatly. These people all have the following attributes in common:

Integrity. Say what you mean, and always align your words with your actions. Speak your mind. If you don’t agree with someone, say so. When you’re wrong, admit it.

Integrity matters at work because it is essential to building trust between people. You simply can’t work well with people you don’t trust.

Consider Dogs. Dogs have great integrity… they are transparent, forthright, honest, and consistent. They don’t waffle; when a dog signs up to be your buddy, that’s a life pledge of loyalty. When a dog is hungry, or thirsty, he doesn’t beat around the bush… he tells you, straight up. These characteristics are why so many people love dogs, even if they have doggy allergies, like I do. Dogs are honorable creatures. Dogs are all about integrity.

Unleash your inner dog.

Passion. I claim you must have sustained passion for the place you’re working, the people you work with, the technology, and the customers. If you go without this for too long, you will fade away.

Like many places in our industry, MS is an intense place to work. I believe most of us wouldn’t put up with it for long if we weren’t working on stuff we’re passionate about, with people we’re passionate about. Sure, the paycheck doesn’t hurt either… but lots of other places have figured out this crafty “money in exchange for work” trick, so why are we all here, in this specific place, at this specific time? It’s because we’re passionate about it. (Also, we are masochists, and megalomaniacs… but that’s a different topic!)

Now, this is not to say all of our jobs are sheer joyful gratification day in and day out. I’ll bet we’ve all had three or maybe even four hours in a row here without so much as a giggle. There is some good and some bad in every job. But on the whole, the deal needs to be good enough that your passion level stays high over the long run. If you find yourself going for too long feeling blah about going to work, something needs to change.

In the insanely great jobs, your work is so aligned with your passions that it doesn’t feel like work any more. This is a pretty cool experience when it happens… you’re in the zone. (Ever see Michael Jordan weave through a basketball defense? Like that. Magical genius.) It’s possible to overdo it, though. Staying in the zone for too long is unhealthy; you identify too closely with your work; family and friends start to miss you; your dog considers revoking his pledge of loyalty. I recommend maintaining a near-zone experience, interspersed with full-on zone moments.

Communication. Communicate with clarity, openness, honesty, and respect. Listen. Be receptive to feedback, and act on it. Listen. Offer honest feedback when appropriate. Talk about the stuff that really matters, not just the easy fluff. Listen.

Getting ideas across between groups of people is a key skill in any workplace. Really successful people are masterful at this.

It’s instructive to think about some of the bad communication stereotypes we see at work:

• The Speachifier. Tactic: snow everyone with high-speed rhetoric, deep thoughts, and really big words. Motto: I will always get the last word. And it will be a long word, something like “transunification”.
• The Passive Aggressive. I don’t agree with you. Therefore, I will punish you by not voicing my disagreement out loud, and working around you. You will figure this out much later, when you fully develop your telepathic powers.
• The Aggressive Talker / Poor Listener. This is most of us. We stomp on the back half of people’s sentences. We cut people off mid-thought. We talk louder. (I’m louder. I must be right!) We start side-conversations in the peanut gallery. We engage in wild hand-waving. And we don’t admit it when people say stuff we don’t understand. (What is “transunification”, anyway?)

Don’t be these people. Call yourself on it. Call them on it.

Communication takes many forms… code, documents, speech. When I’m blocked, I try switching mediums … write things down, or draw a picture, or get out of email and into a verbal discussion.

Also, recognize the value in working with highly malleable media first; this is why we like to draw diagrams and write specs and then talk about them lots before we ever start writing code. Code is brittle, and costs lots to write, and even more to bring to high quality. Changing code is expensive. Changing words in a document is cheap.

Sometimes you need to get somebody else to help you by acting as a translator, or an objective 3rd party that guides you on the “open” and “respectful” bits.

Ability to get the right stuff done. Is there a word in the dictionary that captures this? I couldn’t think of one. “Get the right stuff done” is a wrapper for a bunch of things:

• Stay focused on what’s important. You will never get everything done, so figure out what really matters, do only that, and do it exceedingly well. Then move on to the next set of things. Over time, this will become natural. When you’re not sure, ask for guidance on priorities.
• Be draconian with your time. Say “no” to low-priority things; even little things nibble away your precious time. I got this advice from Paul Maritz. Paul got a lot of the right stuff done in his time here, so I take his word on this one.
• Sign up. Volunteer, even. If you’re not signed up, make sure the person asking you to sign up knows that. If you’re not the right owner, help find the right owner.
• Be reliable… deliver on your commitments. If you’ve signed up for too much stuff, and realize you can’t get it done, warn in advance before it drops off the plate.
• Know the boundaries of thy job. Don’t step on other people’s toes; they hate that. Be cognizant of where your job ends and someone else’s job begins. Maybe you can do it better than them… but it’s their job, so back off.
• Audit, and coach, when necessary. This is the converse of “know the boundaries of thy job”. Sometimes you have a responsibility to step in to make sure people get it right, coach them to success, or raise a flag if something has gone completely awry. This responsibility holds for managers, peers, reports… everyone.
• Be altruistic. Altruism is key especially in a huge workplace where we deal with so much cross-team goop. If you see someone who needs help, help them a little. And if you see the wrong thing happening, nudge for the right thing to happen instead. That said, pick your battles; you don’t want to be the person who’s always pointing out how everyone else is wrong.
• Stay self-aware. Am I doing the right stuff? Are they doing the right stuff? How about now? And now? Reassess your priorities on an ongoing basis.

By longstanding MS tradition, when you’re consistently picking the wrong stuff to do, you will be labelled “random”. If you are doing the right stuff but waiting too long to take action, you will be labelled “indecisive”. These are things to watch out for and fix. In my first two years at MS I was pretty random. More recently I’ve been in an indecisive phase. Soon I will emerge as a beautiful butterfly.

Really successful people consistently get the right stuff done. You might disagree with elements of their style, but at the end of the day, results count.

That’s all I’ve figured out so far. I wish I had all these attributes myself… work in progress, I suppose. I’m sure there’s stuff I’ve missed. Feedback welcome.

osh