The well worn dot matrix printer is connected to the 10 million dollar mainframe. We are single step debugging at the machine level and printing diagnostics. The diagnostics are for the microcode engineers back in Japan. The breakpoint hits. We execute the instruction. Ok. The next instruction XORs memory on itself (leaving 0s) followed by an instruction that restores the memory to the original value. The sequence is there to trick the system into thinking something changed so the memory won’t be paged out. We step into the XOR instruction but instead the system executes the one after it. Hmm.. did we all miss something. Then we execute the next instruction but the system goes backward and executes the XOR. It executed the two instructions out of order. That is not supposed to happen and blew my mind. And worse for our users, it left the 0s in memory instead of what should be there. And the 0s were a problem.

It is 1995 and I didn’t know what an introvert was even as I was looking at one in the mirror. I was debating on whether I should go to the conference’s evening activities. The conference was called “Share” and focused on IBM mainframe technologies. IBM and other vendors certainly had a presence and many informative sessions but the real value was the community. When I started as a VM/CMS system’s programmer I was handed a manual called “What mother never told you” by Marian Varian. It was given to me in an almost clandestine way for it was the book VM/CMS systems programmers learned the secret things IBM didn’t tell them or want them to know (mostly the former).

First day on the job - Internet Image

In April 1999, I left my small apartment on 49th Street in Oakland and headed to the second adult job I ever had - to be a developer at Internet Image. I drove the one mile to MacArthur station and took BART to Fremont. I then walked the 1.5 miles to the office arriving around 9am. In another life the office could have easily been a dental office or an escrow company. There was no one at the front desk, and no one in the office I could see at all.

How it ended - Take 2

Here’s what seems like the more politically correct or self reflective version of how my career at Microsoft ended. It may also be more divisive.

I went from someone obsessed with the job, to someone who didn’t want to do it anymore.

I went from someone that could do anything, to someone that could do nothing.

I went from someone propelled by self-doubt to someone who is at peace.

How it ended - Take 1

I’m sharing how things ended with me at Microsoft, and it didn’t end great. If it was good it wouldn’t have ended; at least not quite yet.

I have a love/hate relashionship with work. In my early years, the amount of work and the weight of the work was crushing and I’d just want it to stop. I did stop once in 2005 when I moved to Beijing and again in 2010 when I left Microsoft for the first time.

Victim Mentality

It’s 2013 or 2014 and I’m participating in a Microsoft people discussion offsite. There are maybe 20 of us there, M1s and M2s. I am a Lead Program Manager. We are having an open discussion on what impacts performance and I ask something like “how does the strength of directs impact a lead’s ability to have impact?”. The three GPMs sitting at the table all turn to me and in what seemed like unison say “that’s victim’s mentality”.

18 Years at Microsoft

I remember my first day at Microsoft. September 13th, 2005. I took a taxi to Sigma building and was greeted by Linda Mao - a fellow PM who was tasked with making sure I felt welcome and that I got onto the bus to the airport. A typhoon caused our flight to be delayed and then eventually canceled. So, we ended up flying to Shanghai and taking a small bus to our hotel near Huangshan (Yellow Mountain). The bus ride was six hours and my seat would not stay prone so I sat as if on a bench seat the entire time. We arrived at the hotel at 3 or 4am, caught a few hours of sleep, and were ready for the kickoff event at 8:30am. It poured, I mean poured like through everything, on our hike the next day. Like many things, best laid plans went sideways and we adapted.

Becoming Chris Nichols

It is maybe 1992 and I am a System’s Engineer with the VM Systems group for Bank of America. I worked in the operating systems part of the group, something I took pride in and derived ego from. Chris sat in the next row of cubicles from mine. I didn’t know much of what he did day to day, besides being the CMS guru. (if you don’t know what CMS is, it was the PC operating system on mainframes before PCs)

First day on the job - Bank of America

It was January 9th, 1989 and time to go to work. I had graduated in May of 1988 with a computer science degree and after several months of job searching, landed in the Entry Level Training program at Bank of America. The previous Friday, I moved out of my parents house packing second hand household goods into my 1969 Dodge Dart. I have no recall of how I spent that first weekend. I do remember going shopping at Safeway on Friday night and getting a frozen pizza. Cooking the frozen pizza only to realize I didn’t have oven mitts nor a knife to cut it with.

First day on the job - MechanicNet

It was early 2003 and my old boss, former Internet Image CEO Lung Tsai called me. I answered on my Sprint One feature phone. He was trying to recruit me to his new company, MechanicNet. It was small - 10ish full time employees. They had some big deals lined up and needed a Director of Engineering. It would pay 90-95K USD plus stock options. I was making double that as a contract programmer at the time, so I politely declined. It was nice to feel wanted and my ego liked the title.