A Reputable Journal

A 23 hour train trip? At some point that seemed like a really charming idea. Eight hours in, I’ll say that the bloom is off the rose. Its been a nice ride, and a good chance to catch up on some reading and blogging but for the most part its just a long ride on a train full of people. The views have been OK, but it is now dark outside.

What? There is no real way to know the answer to this question, but it is one that was posed to the group today. How do you handle uncertainty? How do well do you think on your feet? This is a typical interview question used by many high tech companies. At Luther we might ask prospective faculty, “how many cornstalks in the state of Iowa?”

This question definitely stumped a few people in the room, but others got the idea quickly. This question isn’t about getting the right answer. There is a right answer, but nobody could tell you exactly what it is. There is definitely a wrong answer: “I don’t know,” or “Its not possible.” are two examples of the wrong answer to this question.

So what do you do? You have to make some assumptions. What fraction of the state of Washington is forested, what is the density of trees in the forested area. If you use some reasonable numbers for those two items you can make a reasonable, and defensible estimate. That is something that startups have to do every day. Use the information they have available, and make their best guess. Check the assumptions, and be ready to refine the answer. This is not just true of startups, it is true for all businesses, projects, and life.

Here are a few more highlights and themes from today:

• When you interview, have a story. I’ve been telling my students this for the last several years, but it is much more compelling when you hear it from someone who is actually making hiring decisions. The story should be based around something you have built or designed yourself.

• You can have the best technology and still fail in many different ways.

• What is the one core competency of your company? Starbucks was not coffee, it was training, so that customers had a consistent experience. McDonalds was not making burgers, but rather distribution.

• Finally, it takes four kinds of people to make a successful startup:

  • The Visionary

  • The Builder

  • The Designer

  • The Closer

One person may take on multiple of these roles, but you have to have them all in order to be successful as a company. The Visionary is of course the person who is looking ahead five years and setting the direction. The Builder, owns the solution space. Builders are part of a spectrum. Architects – Hackers. Architects want to have a good strong lasting implementation, and tend to plan the whole system out before coding. Hackers, tend to code as they think, and the best of them have an idea coded by the end of the meeting where it was first introduced. Where are you on that spectrum? The Designers interpret the vision to the builders, they own the problem space, and understand the user experience. In the best case, the builder and the designer are the same person. Finally, the Closer, usually a sales person, often also the CEO is the person who can close the deal.

• The better a company is at serving their customers, the less likely the are to change. This of course goes against every lesson Steve Jobs and others like him taught us. You need to make yourself obsolete before someone else does. In an aside, I think this lesson right here is the achilles heel of higher education.

Today was a big day. The Microsoft mother ship.

We began our visit with an hour in the Envisioning Center, this is Microsoft’s take on the future, 5 years out. There was some pretty cool stuff in there. If you’ve ever drooled over the fancy table on Hawaii Five-O where they can flick things from phone to table, table to screen, etc. You have a pretty good idea of where Microsoft thinks the workplace of the future is headed. I’m there, I want it. I’m already imagining myself walking into the classroom, iPad in hand, and flicking a copy of where we left off last class from my iPad to the board. Wait, thats a bit of a mixed vision, I’m pretty sure they were surface pads, not iPads. But you get the idea.

After the Envisioning center we moved to another of the 128 buildings on the Microsoft campus where we had time to have our daily group meeting and book presentation. We were escorted by Tina Wang, and she joined in to the discussion of Sara Lacy’s Once you’re Lucky, Twice you’re good. Tina works as part of Enwe’s group, but is the only one here in the US. After our lunch we had a really fun talk with Neil Leslie, who shared a lot of wisdom with the group. And finally Dave Maltz joined us for a final hour on scaling up the data center. Its fair to say that by the time Dave was done everyone had soaked up about as much information as is possible for brain to take in one day.

A couple observations. This is not the Microsoft of the 90’s. The Microsoft that I knew and worked with at Net Perceptions were, well, to be blunt, they were bullies back then, because they could be. I get a real sense that is gone. Instead they talk of change, how they need to compete, and if you’re comfortable, you shouldn’t be there.

Returning to key themes:

• Passion: I don’t think I need to say more about this.

• Projects: I’ve told my seniors this for a few years now, but it has a lot more credibility coming from an outsider. You need to have a project to show when you go to interview. Bring an app you have built on your phone. Show a website you have developed on the browser. Be prepared to talk about the challenges, trade-offs, and succeesses you have had in developing your project.

• Linked In: This is a critical tool for finding a job. If you are a CS junior or senior and have not created a LinkedIn profile. Do it now.

• Failure: We heard a lot of stories about failure today, and we will continue to hear of them. Startups, started and ‘buried,’ products and projects that failed and never saw the light of day. The most important message, that I hope students get from this trip, and talking to a bunch of successful people, is that failure is OK. Fail Fast, and learn from your mistakes. It is a cliche to say that you learn more from failure than success, but it is true.

In the evening it was fun to unwind with our first group dinner. We met up with recent Luther Alum Jake Nowosatka at Cutters Crabhouse. Its at the far end of Pike Place Market.