What I learned at Microsoft Part III: Understand the rules

What I learned at Microsoft Part III: Understand the rules

This is a sparring program, similar to the programmed reality of the Matrix. It has the some basic rules, rules like gravity. What you must learn is that these rules are no different that the rules of a computer system. Some of them can be bent. Others can be broken. Understand? -Morpheus The matrix The [...]

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What I learned at Microsoft Part I: Ego

What I learned at Microsoft Part I: Ego

e·go [ee-goh, eg-oh] noun self-esteem or self-image; feelings: Your criticism wounded his ego. Like a child.. Like a little child going to kindergarten on the first day, I walked into the Microsoft New Employee Orientation (NEO), humbled and intimidated.  In my mind, everyone at Microsoft in the early 1990’s were technical gods. In my mind [...]

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Bye Bye Microsoft

Bye Bye Microsoft

Just a few minutes ago, my manager and I announced to the team that I would be leaving Microsoft..  here’s the email   After 20+ years at Microsoft, Cyra has decided to chart a new course outside of Microsoft. I can’t hope to outline all the accomplishments and achievements that Cyra has contributed to Microsoft [...]

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Book: The First 90 Days: Critical Success Strategies…

Book: The First 90 Days: Critical Success Strategies…

The reviews for The First 90 Days: Critical Success Strategies for New Leaders at All Levels were generally good, but I found the following commentary by Peter Leerskov “The Strategist, www.lace.dk”  pretty useful and made sense for folks involved in a significant organizational change:   1. PROMOTE YOURSELF. Make a mental break from your old [...]

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Learning learning

Learning learning

“What do you mean you’re ‘teaching him to read by having him read’?!?” At the time, Jeremy was just learning to read and was having a little trouble.  He was working hard, but they were not teaching him any sub-lexical (phonemes or letter sounds) reading skills.  So the whole family worked together on letter and [...]

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MSDN Home and Hub Beta 2

MSDN Home and Hub Beta 2

Version 2 of the MSDN Home and Hub gave us the opportunity to improve some of the videos, but to really focus on the professional developers that were focused on staying up to date – rather than on-boarding or cross boarding.  The MSDN News Page was the combination of editorial strategy to align across teams [...]

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Silverlight.net site beta release announcement

Silverlight.net site beta release announcement

This is a copy of the email that I sent to the teams about the updated beta.silverlight site.  As we prepare to move out of beta and into the production release, it seemed appropriate to have some of the background information posted.  My work on MSDN, has really forced me to look at the workflow [...]

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