If you’re a creative, you know the gap between the vision in your head and what you actually build. You may end up disappointed, frustrated, delighted. The gap gnaws at you and forces you to either give up or close the gap. I am working on closing that gap.

Recently, I was looking for a project to work on. I wanted to feel productive and to me that mostly means creating. I listen to a ton of podcasts and I also like True Crime. I brainstormed a bit with ChatGPT and landed on an idea - wouldn’t it be great for the True Crime cases that really interest me, if I could get a feed of new podcasts and other case updates on my phone?

A year ago today my alarm woke me at 6am. I needed to be in the office before my colleagues which in itself wasn’t that unique. What was unique was the reason I needed to be in early. It wasn’t for some meeting with Redmond, rather it was to turn in my badge. After 18 years at Microsoft and 35 years of working, my life was about to change. There was no hoopla or formal farewell or retirement gift. And I didn’t want to see anyone on my way out. I was grateful for the two close colleagues I did run into and shared moments with.

In The Bear season four finale Syd confronts Carmy in disbelief. Carmy has been keeping a truth that Syd just can’t comprehend. Carmy’s truth as it relates to me and tech hit me hard (warning, spoiler alert ahead).

Going into my junior year of high school, that would be a long time ago, I could choose two electives. There were some restrictions, like you had to take one from this group and one from that group. It was hard to avoid language studies and I really did not want to study one (a preview of my Mandarin illiteracy). I noticed that instead I could take a class called “Computers”.

“Vince, Vince Allio, come to the stage.” I’m a month into my tenure at Microsoft China and attending an org-wide offsite in the suburbs of Beijing. Terrified of attention, I was hanging out in the back of the ballroom with a few team members. My name is called again and people turn to look for me. I stitch on a smile and make my way to the stage. I am at once hyper aware and completely dumbfounded. I’m handed a small device. What is it? Someone helps me put it on. Headphones connected to a MP3 player. A microphone is placed in my hand. Other foreigners in the org are flanking me on the stage. A song plays in my ear. I’m still dumbfounded. The foreigner next to me, Paul Nelson, starts making strange noises. He’s singing. Something incomprehensible. Then I “get it”, I’m supposed to sing the song I’m hearing in my ears. It takes me a few beats to realize the song is in Mandarin. It’s meant to be great fun.

It’s hard for some of us to be vulnerable and ask for help. It’s hard for me. I’ll always be grateful to those who went out of their way to help me unconditionally.

It is 1998 and my project was to write a corporate directory web application. It would be the third time I’d written the app, the first time with the backend a mainframe NOMAD database and mainframe web server and the second time with SQL/IIS. This time I would be using a Netscape LDAP backend. The problem was the official LDAP directory was owned by the team we were at war with and I was under strict orders not to collaborate with them. (When I say “at war with”, I mean some real nasty corporate infighting;details left out to protect the innocent.) My boss asked me to set up and run our own LDAP server so that we would have no dependency on the other team and we could eventually take over their business. I had no idea how to do this. I tried on my own and hit many roadblocks. It was slow going. I took a risk and reached out to Trevor, the senior engineer working on LDAP for the opposing team and asked him for pointers. Trevor would have been justified to point me at some docs and leave it at that. After all, we were building something his team had the charter for and had already built. But he didn’t just give me a courtesy answer. He came down to my cubicle.

My 22 year old son asks me “so what exactly did you do at Microsoft?”. He doesn’t want to know what products I worked on or results achieved, but what my actual work was. And I am at a loss on how to respond which means I was either really bad at being a Program Manager or really good at it.

Over the years, I’ve heard variations of this question from parents, siblings, friends, interviewees. I offered up variations of unsatisfactory abstract answers

It is the spring of 2001 and I’m at my desk on the engineering floor of PurchasePro when the CEO walks in. There are maybe 300 people on the floor and most stand up to listen to him speak. I take a quick glance then sit down. I’m just doing some consulting work for the company. The CEO is addressing some business practice allegations that appeared in the local newspaper. I don’t remember what he said specifically, but I do remember at one point he cried. At lunch that day with a few PurchasePro employees, it was clear they believed in him and the crying was a sign of how much he cared for the company. I thought the crying was that of a man who’s been caught.

One of my early work projects was a mainframe copy utility, something I called bldcpy. It had all kinds of options to help system programmers with their daily tasks. Copy files across mainframe nodes, automatically link/detach drives, sfs/minidisk, on the fly content modifications. It even had tape/tape and disk/tape support.

This was 30+ years ago, so details are fuzzier than a Qingdao sunset but I remember as I was developing this tool, an experienced (old) systems programmer told me “everything is a copy file”. Well not everything, but many things. And throughout my career, I came to see it in many things we did. System builds. Migrations. Source repositories. Copy/Paste coding. Data cleansing. PPT generation.

Interview Diary - Microsoft 2005

When we moved, jobless and homeless, to Beijing in April 2005 I didn’t really have a plan. I was burned out on tech and thought I could take a couple of years to try different things before returning to the states. After a couple of months of boredom and negative case flow, my anxiety got me looking for a job. I spoke with an old boss who was helping establish the Google office in Beijing. They were not quite ready for me and I’m pretty sure I wasn’t ready for them. A family friend pointed me at Microsoft and even though I didn’t think I had much of a chance, I sent her my resume. A technical phone screen ensued. I don’t remember the details of the phone screen but remember at the end the interviewer (Jian?) said in response to my second question that there was no need to ask more questions, I had already passed. The next day or so I received an onsite interview invitation.

I’m of the generation that grew up with typewriters. In ninth grade one of my electives was typing. Along with wood shop. Seriously. Life skills. One day, we had a typing speed/quality exam and I got a head start. When the teacher said “go”, I was already on the second paragraph. She walked to my desk and ripped the paper out of the typewriter. It was the only time I was caught cheating in school.