Pivotal Moments with John Lam
Pivotal Moments with John Lam
John Lam
Achieve your career and life goals sooner by learning from the pivotal moments of my guests. Each Monday a new guest, mostly working in tech and Microsoft, will share with you pivotal stories from their careers and lives and the lessons they learned. Hosted by John Lam.
Ep. 14 Defying Conventional Wisdom: Harris Syed
Harris Syed defied conventional wisdom in his unlikely journey from Pakistan to the Partner band at Microsoft.
Aug 15, 2022
58 min
Ep. 13 Rong Lu: from Engineer to PM to Manager, her 16+ year journey at Microsoft
Rong is a PM Manager at Microsoft and a 16+ year veteran of Developer Division. This is the story of her journey from engineer to PM to PM Manager, and from China to the United States.
Jul 11, 2022
41 min
Ep.12 Jill Jacobson: on UX Design at Microsoft, her circuitous journey to UX design from industrial design, and rediscovering joy from creative pursuits
Jill shares with us her story of resilience and grit that leads to her current position as a Senior UX Designer at Microsoft. Jill turned the disappointment of being fired from her first job in industrial design into a successful career designing some of the most complex user interfaces at Microsoft.
Jun 27, 2022
49 min
Ep.11 Tim Heuer: on changing from evangelism to product development, making changes to his health, and the characteristics of a great PM
Tim Heuer is a Principal PM Manager at Microsoft. A 17 year veteran of the company, Tim shares with us some pivotal moments in his life: getting healthier, transitioning from evangelism to product, moving and getting re-org'd at the company, becoming a people manager, and creating a healthy work-life balance.
Jun 20, 2022
43 min
Ep.10 The Wisdom of my guests: looking at my conversations with my first 9 guests through the lens of Change, Trying on the Job for Size, and Mistakes
Looking back at the interviews with my first 9 guests through the lens of Change, Trying the Job on for Size, and Mistakes.
Jun 13, 2022
48 min
Ep.9 Larry Osterman: on working at Microsoft for over 37 years from MS-DOS to Azure and advice on how to have a long and productive career at the company
Larry Osterman is a Principal Software Engineer at Microsoft, and he's been here for over 37 years! In a career that starts with MS-DOS and continues today with Azure, Larry has seen it all and shares not only his stories, but the accumulated wisdom he has gained in his distinguished career.
Jun 6, 2022
1 hr 40 min
Ep.8 Sid Unnithan: on changing jobs at Microsoft, preparing for informational interviews, imposter syndrome and autonomy in the PM role
Sid Unnithan is an early in career Program Manager 2 on my team whose career spans both Windows and the Python team in DevDiv. We talk about the importance of having autonomy in your job. How product building is a team sport, how to deal with negativity from others and how to interview to move laterally within the company.
May 30, 2022
1 hr 7 min
Ep.7 Dustin Campbell: on transitioning from PM to Dev mid-career, building .NET developer tools and escaping from a software sweatshop in Las Vegas
Dustin Campbell is a Principal Software Development engineer at Microsoft who's been working on .NET developer tooling for the past 15 years. He's also a jazz guitarist, a reformed spam tools creator and an escapee from a software sweatshop in Las Vegas.
May 23, 2022
1 hr 21 min
Ep.6 Jeffrey Mew: on experiences at Microsoft as an early-in-career PM, the Waterloo co-op experience and the impact that has had on him, and his love of optimization
Jeffrey is a graduate of the co-op program at the University of Waterloo. In his 3 years at Microsoft, he has shipped the Jupyter Notebooks in VS Code experience, partnered with Facebook on PyTorch tooling, and is building a brand new data wrangling experience in VS Code.
May 16, 2022
1 hr 14 min
Ep.5 Sharon Xu: on changing careers from finance to tech, how a joint degree in business and engineering made it possible and her experiments with art and social media
Sharon Xu is a Program Manager on the Python Team at Microsoft, holder of a degree in Engineering and Business from the University of Western Ontario in Canada, and a retired currency trader.
May 9, 2022
1 hr 12 min
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