Dream Jobs

Almost 16 years ago, during the summer of 2001, I was an intern at Microsoft Research. My Ph.D. advisor from the University of Virginia, Jack Davidson, was on sabbatical in the Programmer Productivity Research Center in a small group called Programming Languages and Systems. Chris Fraser, Dave Hanson, and Todd Proebsting were the full-time members of the group, and my advisor and I were temporary passers through. Todd's research had been a big part of my master's thesis. Two of Dave's books had been on my computer science bookshelf for years, both of them well worn with dog-eared pages and notes scribbled in the margins. And Chris was my academic grandfather, my Ph.D. advisor's Ph.D. advisor.

Our group went out for burritos every Thursday at a restaurant called Acapulco Fresh. Sometimes one of Dave's former Princeton undergrad students would join us, an engineer named Alex Gounares who at the time was Bill Gates' Technology Advisor. Sometimes Murray Sargent would join us. Murray had been working with Microsoft since 1987 and had, according to legend, been the guy who wrote the code that allowed Windows 2.0 to break the 640K memory barrier by utilizing Intel's protected mode. I was in awe of these folks, their stories, their work, and the company that was investing in such talented engineers and the great technology that they were building.

I'm telling you all of this, because today I become Microsoft's CTO. Even though 16 years have gone by since I was last a Microsoft employee, the things I was most impressed with years ago are as good or better now than they were then. I am still in awe of the talented folks at Microsoft, many of whom I’ve had a chance to work with as we’ve made a ton of progress to bring LinkedIn and Microsoft technology and products together to help create amazing experiences for our users. I am not ashamed to admit I have a copy of Dong Yu’s and Li Deng’s book, Automatic Speech Recognition, sitting on my nightstand. And I am still in awe of the breadth and quality of Microsoft's technology. From Surface Pro, Surface Book and Surface Studio (which is making my life as a photographer better than I thought it could be), to Windows 10, Xbox, Cortana, Office 365, Bing, Azure, Dynamics, HoloLens, the great working coming out of MSR, and more, there is just a staggering amount of technical goodness happening that's creating delight and value for more than a billion customers.

Aside from all of this (and my kids' belief that any company associated with Minecraft must be awesome), the thing that most excites me about Microsoft is the opportunity to help realize Satya Nadella’s and Microsoft's mission to empower every person and every organization on the planet to achieve more. Being able to help such an amazingly talented group of folks with so many great tools at their disposal deliver on the mission that Satya has articulated for Microsoft is quite literally my dream job. I also get to continue to help LinkedIn achieve our vision of creating economic opportunity for every member of the global workforce as SVP of Infrastructure at LinkedIn, and continuing as a member of the LinkedIn executive team. Among my top priorities will be working with the R&D teams at LinkedIn to ensure that we continue to invest in the technologies that will help us to scale and grow LinkedIn, that we continue to have the necessary building blocks for creating future products and services; and, ensuring that we are able to deliver on our 2017 joint roadmap with Microsoft.

The thing that gets me up in the morning, and that has always excited me about technology is its role in empowering people and helping enrich their lives. I am so optimistic about where Microsoft is headed, and how we - as technologists from across the tech industry - can continue to use technology to tackle some of society's most important challenges. I literally can’t wait to see where we’re going next.