Lessons from my book: Chapter 19 – Testing the Limits
In chapter 19 of my book Get Back Up I am now the Test Manager of Microsoft Publisher. In six short years I’ve progressed from configuring hardware in a lab to testing product software, then I became a test lead and now I was a test manager. Not bad for a guy without a college degree who had to interview twice and overcome four NOs to get the job. The next role after test manager was product unit manager (PUM). This is the person who runs the entire business, and at this point in my career I wasn’t aware of [...]
Lessons from my book: Chapter 18 – The Word is Change
In chapter 18 of my book Get Back Up Suzie and I have left San Jose for Redmond, Washington, where I would be starting a new role as a test lead on Word, Microsoft’s word processing product. I had done all I could in the PowerPoint group to move up in the organization, but since they only worked on this one product and only had the need for one test manager, my next move was limited. Redmond was Microsoft headquarters so there were many products and many opportunities to continue my path forward. My move to Word was a lateral [...]
Lessons from my book: Chapter 17 – Presenting Myself
In chapter 17 of my book Get Back Up I am now working at Microsoft. I started about as low in the company as I could, working in their test lab, where one of my jobs was to keep the lab clean. As I’ve said before, it doesn’t matter where you start as long as you start. I was in the door, and now I was going to prove to them that they were right to hire me, but to do that I had to first find out what the company and my boss rewarded and valued in its employees. [...]
Lessons from my book: Chapter 16 – Microsoft’s Arrogance Versus Mine
In chapter 16 of my book Get Back Up I find myself unemployed again, but this time with two children. I couldn’t afford to screw around and had to find a job fast. During my last couple of weeks at Ashton-Tate I had already started sending out my résumé and I already had a couple of interviews set up. One company I didn’t plan to apply to was Microsoft. In 1991, Microsoft was the evil empire. They were a behemoth of a company, crushing anybody that got in their way. I worked for a company that was going away and [...]
Lessons from my book: Chapter 15 – Finding the Right Bugs
In chapter 15 of my book Get Back Up a lot changes for me and my wife. Monday, February 26 would be my first day as a full-time employee at Ashton-Tate and on Saturday, February 24th our first child, Nicholas, was born. During this time I was working two jobs. I was transitioning from a contract position at Ashton-Tate to full-time and I was also working at Power Up Software on the weekends testing printers. That was where I was on that Saturday when Suzie went into labor. Suzie was also working as a temp at another software company and [...]
Lessons from my book: Chapter 14 – Printers, Plotters, and Cameras
In chapter 14 of my book Get Back Up I decide it’s time to get that job in tech. After all, it was the main reason I came to California. The job at Wendy’s almost destroyed my back. I couldn’t go through that again. One weekend, I came across an ad for device testers. I didn’t know what a device tester was but I was confident that I could do any job in tech if I were just given the chance. The problem, so far, was that no one would give me that chance due to my lack of experience. I [...]
Lessons from my book: Chapter 13 – Shouldn’t You Be Looking for a Job?
In chapter 13 of my book Get Back Up I find myself without a plan. After multiple business failures and a bankruptcy, I don’t want to think about anything. Luckily or unfortunately, depending on how you want to look at it, I was in a place where I could do just that. We didn’t have a place to stay in San Jose (or jobs, for that matter), but Suzie’s parents had a house in Napa Valley that they’d bought for their future retirement. They spent weekends there and told us we could live there until we found a place to live [...]
Lessons from my book: Chapter 12 – Get Over It
In chapter 11 of my book Get Back Up we lost everything. The shoe repair was closed and we lost all our investments to foreclosure or bankruptcy. We couldn’t feel any lower, but we knew we needed to start over. While we lost all the material things we’d acquired during the last few years, one thing I didn’t lose was the knowledge I acquired about computers and software. Earlier in the book I talked about my friend Johnson and how curious he was, and how that made me curious as well. One of the things we became interested in was [...]
Lessons from my book: Chapter 11 – Shoe Repair, More Real Estate, and a House of Cards
Chapter 11 of my book Get Back Up finds me at a crossroads. I’ve been told by multiple doctors that I have Failed Back Syndrome, and there’s nothing they can do to fix it. Even the workers’ comp people say I’ll never work again, and they give me a lump sum payment to close my case. Was it really over? Was I destined to follow in my father’s footsteps and end up living off of social security disability (SSD) checks? I’d already decided I wasn’t going to be addicted to painkillers like he was and had flushed all my pills. [...]
Lessons from my book: Chapter 10 – I Don’t Even Get to Drink the Beer
After my failed attempt to return to the restaurant business, chapter ten of my book Get Back Up finds me back in sales. Unlike selling real estate and life insurance, however, this sales endeavor was made much easier by the fact that the product was liquor and beer, and unlike other products, I didn’t have to start out by selling the need. Restaurants and bars obviously already had the need for my product. Another thing that made this sales job easier was the state law in Florida that gave exclusivity of certain brands to a single liquor company. One of [...]
Lessons from my book: Chapter 9 – The Walls Go Up
After a few years spent trying my hand at various types of sales jobs, I decided to go back into the restaurant business. This time, however, I wasn’t joining another cookie-cutter franchise with its 300-page operations manual telling you how to do everything from the amount of ice to put in a drink to how big a leaf of lettuce should be. No, this time I was going to do things my way and I was sure I was going to get it right. Of course, before I could begin, I had to get the place open. I found a [...]
Lessons from my book: Chapter 8 – We Are Not Very Handy
By the eighth chapter of my book, Get Back Up, I have made my way out of the South Philly projects, joined and been released from the army with a service connected disability, worked in fast food until I was so badly injured in a car accident that I could no longer stand on my feet long enough to do so, and became a life insurance salesman. I hadn’t really achieved the American Dream yet, but I now thought I’d found the way: ‘No-money-down’ real estate investing. It was the early eighties and no-money-down investing was all the rage. Late-night [...]