Pivotal Moments with John Lam
Pivotal Moments with John Lam
John Lam
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
1 hour 40 minutes Posted Jun 6, 2022 at 7:00 am.
Carnegie Mellon in the 1980s: 03:04Interviewing for a small 500 person startup in Seattle: 06:01Meeting Steve Ballmer, "Head of HR": 08:23Interviewing with Gordon Letwin: 10:50Flying to Paris to fix a floppy drive bug in MS DOS 4.0: 13:33Burgermaster for lunch and naming objects in MS DOS: 16:58Documenting the creation of Windows NT: Greg Zachary and Helen Custer: 19:35On the importance of lunch conversations in driving the culture of a team: 23:30It's Alive! Windows NT running Reversi on an i860 emulator: 28:04Thursday Beers, MAPI Beers and the Weekly World News: 30:08Rewriting the Beep() API in Windows Vista to save tens of millions of dollars: 34:22Larry's brief tenur in Microsoft Research: 43:14The legendary Exchange Server "Stonehenge Party": 49:03Scalability Day and Microsoft's beginnings as an enterprise software company: 55:26How Larry's biggest feature in Windows 7 kept killing gamers in-game: 01:04:44The origins of the Windows Runtime team in Windows 8: 01:07:09The origin story of the IUnknown.com domain name: 01:11:26How Larry enabled language projections in WinRT using COM: 01:12:34From Windows to Azure: Confidential Compute and encrypted VMs: 01:20:13On joining DevDiv and the Azure SDK team and becoming "mini-Jeff": 01:27;17What advice would you give someone just starting their career at Microsoft? 01:32:28Something that gave Larry an outsized amount of joy recently: 01:37:21External LinksLarry's GlowforgeLarry's ornate box, cut on the GlowforgeThe Goupil G4 with the showstopper floppy drive bugGordon LetwinShowstopper by G. Pascal ZacharyInside Windows NT by Helen CusterPC Roadkill by Michael HymanMusic credits––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––Track: Lost In Medina — Amine Maxwell [Audio Library Release]Music provided by Audio Library PlusWatch: https://youtu.be/qNSdpqSkRe4Free Download / Stream: https://alplus.io/lost-medina––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––
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Show notes
Links to sections (with timestamps)Larry's been here for 37 years 10 months ... or has he? 01:53Carnegie Mellon in the 1980s: 03:04Interviewing for a small 500 person startup in Seattle: 06:01Meeting Steve Ballmer, "Head of HR": 08:23Interviewing with Gordon Letwin: 10:50Flying to Paris to fix a floppy drive bug in MS DOS 4.0: 13:33Burgermaster for lunch and naming objects in MS DOS: 16:58Documenting the creation of Windows NT: Greg Zachary and Helen Custer: 19:35On the importance of lunch conversations in driving the culture of a team: 23:30It's Alive! Windows NT running Reversi on an i860 emulator: 28:04Thursday Beers, MAPI Beers and the Weekly World News: 30:08Rewriting the Beep() API in Windows Vista to save tens of millions of dollars: 34:22Larry's brief tenur in Microsoft Research: 43:14The legendary Exchange Server "Stonehenge Party": 49:03Scalability Day and Microsoft's beginnings as an enterprise software company: 55:26How Larry's biggest feature in Windows 7 kept killing gamers in-game: 01:04:44The origins of the Windows Runtime team in Windows 8: 01:07:09The origin story of the IUnknown.com domain name: 01:11:26How Larry enabled language projections in WinRT using COM: 01:12:34From Windows to Azure: Confidential Compute and encrypted VMs: 01:20:13On joining DevDiv and the Azure SDK team and becoming "mini-Jeff": 01:27;17What advice would you give someone just starting their career at Microsoft? 01:32:28Something that gave Larry an outsized amount of joy recently: 01:37:21External LinksLarry's GlowforgeLarry's ornate box, cut on the GlowforgeThe Goupil G4 with the showstopper floppy drive bugGordon LetwinShowstopper by G. Pascal ZacharyInside Windows NT by Helen CusterPC Roadkill by Michael HymanMusic credits––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––Track: Lost In Medina — Amine Maxwell [Audio Library Release]Music provided by Audio Library PlusWatch: https://youtu.be/qNSdpqSkRe4Free Download / Stream: https://alplus.io/lost-medina––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––