Yag moves on.  He used to be the Group Manager of Visual Studio Data team before the team got merged into Visual Basic product unit and became a part of Visual Studio Professional Data team.  Although I only spent a couple of months in Visual Studio Data team and only had 1 face-to-face meeting with him, I learned a lot from him.  You see, it really doesn't require multiple encounters to learn great stuff from a great person.  You know it when you meet that kind of person and you naturally absorb great stuff from that person like a dry sponge.  That's what happened when I met yag.

Well, I actually had two face-to-face "official" meetings with him.  One was during my interview and one was after I joined VS Data team.  I think I only spent abouut 30 min with him during my interview.  But that 30 min definitely helped me decide to eventually accept the offer.  I met great people during my interview process and yag just sealed it at the end.  We mostly talked about my passion around Agile Development.  The second "official" meeting was the 1-on-1 he scheduled with me.  During that meeting, he showed his passion around community.  We also shared some frustration about how community stuff was done.  Oh, don't get me wrong.  That frustration was from being too passionate about something.  I guess "frustration" is the wrong word for that...

Now, why do I think our paths will cross again?  It's because we share same passion, creating great software that customer really needs by being pragmatic (Agile + Community).  If you ask me, I rather listen to the customer and provide solution that just works as soon as possible rather than worrying about hundreds of other political, process and architectural things (a.k.a. impediments).  If you ask me, I rather sit with the customer during the project cycle than in my own office guessing what customer needs.  If you ask me, I get more excited when I get a small "thank you" note from the customer I helped than when I receive a "job well done" message from my manager.  And I believe that's where yag's passion lies also.

Best wishes to yag in his new and exciting role. 

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