Potential
The month since my last post has been incredibly hectic. I've started this particular article several times, only to abandon the effort because there were too many other things needing to be done.
So, just as the last time, I'm here working on a weekend- this time the project is completely something I should be doing during the week (I'm adding enough underlying bus support to a software test bus driver that we can use it for some simulated DMA test drivers, our previous solution to this seems to have pulled a vanishing act). I'm in the test phase of it, so that occasionally leaves me some time to write as I wait for things to complete.
That previous article was the latest in a theme of the "P's and Q's" of my job here at Microsoft. Events of the last month have surfaced an important "P"- the one I titled this essay with.
First off, there has been incredible growth in the support I've had in triaging that never ending stream of lab failures from Patrick and Wei, buttressed by their invaluable assistance in fixing the stream of test bugs we find in doing that. Evgeny has been making steady progress on some new tools to help us catch any inadvertent regressions in the basic framework interfaces for UMDF and KMDF as early as possible.
But the one that brought the issue into focus was a job interview- a delightful young woman named Neslihan, who had been at Microsoft a short time, was desirous of joining our QA team. She was energetic and excited about the work, well-educated (a graduate of the Middle East Technical University in Ankara), and in the obligatory coding exercises she showed that all that passion and drive was coupled with plenty of intellect- even as she assembled the basic solutions, she was looking for ways to improve her algorithms, rapidly proposing and then disposing of various solutions at a rate that made it clear she had "the stuff" needed to work on the sorts of problems we wind up working on. Now, I've interviewed good candidates before (Wei himself, for instance), and I get excited about it myself- will the other interviewers see the same things I saw, or will some shortcoming surface that I didn't see?
Well, she did fine, and will be joining us in a few short weeks, which is certainly good for us. But it also got me to thinking about where that excitement comes from. for me, at least in some vicarious fashion, it's a sense of all this young person is going to be able to accomplish- not simply for us, but for Microsoft, and even [as is the case of much of what we do] for larger groups- planetary impact (even if it's only a tiny one, it can at least ripple there, after all), if you will. Thinking about that led me to thinking about the way I view my colleagues (as the senior member of the group, mentoring in one form or another is an important part of my job)- again that same sense of potential, and the chance to help in bringing it forth. Finally came the idea that I myself am here for the same reason- someone saw that potential in me as I interviewed, and in some sense still sees it as my management and I go through our career planning processes.
Then came the dislocation of one of those occasional "group moves" that occur here- at the end of it, I had a new office mate- a young Russian lad named Alexey Karetnikov, who is here as an intern- a student in St. Petersburg in the Russian Federation. I began by trotting out the half dozen phrases I could remember of Russian from my high school days (hard to believe that was more than 30 years ago), and we proceeded to get acquainted- common interests in anime and music (I've been listening to quite a bit of Russian music he has brought in for us to listen to ever since, and I quite enjoy it), and of course in software. He has been working on automating testing of our debugger extensions, and it is clear even in this short amount of time that he has had excellent training and is a highly skilled programmer already.
I took a brief trip early on with him to help him get signed up with the Social Security Administration (need to have that Taxpayer ID number, after all) and secure a bank account (after all, a dislocation to a new language, culture, and country could require some assistance). Basically, he's a very nice person in addition to all else. Once again, the potential for a person like that is staggering.
Now for people with that kind of potential, we offer the opportunity to have that kind of global impact, and somewhere inside all of us is the desire to see that happen. I recall (or else I've become delirious in my old age) that we had an advertising tag line for a while- "Your Potential, Our Passion". Well, I believe that's more than a slogan- it's a maxim and a glimpse into who and what we truly are- or at least want to be [and that is itself a part of our own potential].
Finally, there's Bill's exodus- plenty has been said about it (and if I've got time, I'll add my little send off a bit later)- but again- think of the potential Mr. Gates still has and the efforts he is now beginning to make to realize it. Behind him he has left for many of us the means to realize our dreams and ambitions. Now among his undertakings is one to help potentially millions of our fellows to achieve their potential- among others, helping them get the chance to stay alive long enough to have an opportunity to move beyond subsistence.
Well, in his case, it's been said better and no doubt by better observers and in more skilled terms. But overall, it's been time for me to think about what the implications of the term are, and I thought I'd share some of that...
Setup is done- time to get back and make stuff work...
