16 transformative ideas on career success for software engineers (and probably everyone). Drawn from the book "Making it Big in Software". Ideas from industry luminaries, academics, executives, and technologists on how to be successful.

1. Sam Lightstone1
Making it Big in Software
Sam Lightstone
Distinguished Engineer &
IBM Master Inventor
IBM Canada
e-mail: light@ca.ibm.com
IBM Post-Doctoral Fellow Symposium Keynote
University of Toronto

2. Sam Lightstone2
Ideas in this
lecture are a
sample drawn
from this book

3. Sam Lightstone3
Software is the place to be
Data and devices are proliforating
The world has ~7 billion people
13 billion connected devices.
15 Petabytes of data daily.
In 2014 the volume of data created by
U.S. companies alone will be enough to
fill ten thousand Libraries of Congress.
By 2020 35 Zettabytes of data will flow
over the Internet (that’s a stack of books
from here to Pluto 20 times)
Virtually every device that consumes
direct current electricity also requires
electrical and computer engineering.
Our world is increasingly interconnected,
automated and interactive.

4. Sam Lightstone4
A world of unexpected technology success

5. Sam Lightstone5
What it takes to become a Senior Technical Staff
Member or Distinguished Engineer
(Sam’s unofficial thoughts)
Evaluated by executives beyond your
product group
It’s not only up to your boss
It’s not only up to you boss’s boss
You need to demonstrate a portfolio of
success
Technical successes
Organizational technical leadership
Cross product activity and leadership
Customer activity
Support for sales and closing business
Publications and patents
Corporate awards
Activity with IBM Research or University
research helps
~ Distilling the Requirements ~
Distinguished Engineer:
• An industry leader.
• Recognized broadly outside of IBM
• Technical Leadership to > 100
engineers
• Helped create an entire product or
industry (hundreds of millions of
dollars attributed to your work)
Senior Technical Staff Member
• An IBM division leader.
• Recognized broadly inside IBM
across divisions
• Technical Leadership to > 25
engineers
• Helped create major product
enhancements (tends of millions of
dollars attributed to your work)

6. Sam Lightstone6
16 Not so obvious
thoughts about
your future
(loosely grouped)

7. Sam Lightstone7
Career Context
Career Planning
Social Dynamics

8. Sam Lightstone8
Career Context

9. Sam Lightstone9
Idea #1: Freedom
Seniority gives you
influence over
What you work on
Where you work
(to a lesser degree) when
you work
š The Jim Gray story
The late computer scientist Jim Gray,
was one of the founders of modern
database systems and a leader in
scalable computing before his
mysterious disappearance in a boating
accident on a clear, calm day in 2007. Before recruiting
Gray, Microsoft had always resisted the pressure to
establish R&D sites outside of their core location in
Redmond, Washington. Gray just wasn’t interested in
living there. No problem. In 1995, they built their new
laboratory, called the Microsoft Bay Area Research Center
(BARC), around him. Some may believe that Microsoft
had decided to finally tap into the incredible pool of
software talent and dynamism in the Bay area, but in truth,
the move to open BARC was motivated heavily by a
desire to attract Gray to Microsoft.
According to Senior Vice President of Microsoft Research
Rick Rashid, “If Jim had wanted a lab in Monte
Carlo, we would have built a lab in Monte
Carlo.”
(Extract from “Making it Big in Software”)
Consider the story of Jim Gray, on the
right. Microsoft approached him. He
refused because of location concerns,
and they agreed to build the Bay Area
Research Center in California around
him. That is the power to work not only
on what you want, but where you want.

10. Sam Lightstone10
Kuh-ching!!!
Perhaps obvious, but the most
successful people earn considerably
more money. As a new graduate this
may not be to of mind. As you get older,
and life responsibilities increase [house,
school fees, growing family, retirement
planning] this becomes more important.

11. Sam Lightstone11
Idea #2: School versus job:
Professionalism work is the opposite of school work!
SCHOOL JOB
Do your own work or you are expelled
Fixed workload
Constant feedback
Obedience – do what is asked
Master what is known
Collaborate or you are fired
Unstructured workload
Infrequent feedback
Create what doesn’t yet exist
Initiative – offer what is needed
Focus on fairness Focus on creating value

12. Sam Lightstone12
Idea #3: Who is often more important than what(from Making it Big in Software: Get the job. Work the org. Become great.)
“Try to work with the smartest people you can find,
since they challenge you to think and work
better…. When you work with really top-notch,
smart engineers, it will fundamentally change the
way you think and the way you program.”
-Marissa Mayer, VP, Search Products, Google Inc.
Who you work with
Who you work for
“…always make sure you’re in an environment
that leaves you feeling empowered to fully use
your talents, and that you feel appreciated for the
work you do.”
- Diane Greene, Co-founder and past CEO of
VMWare

13. Sam Lightstone13
Idea #4: The centrality of fun
You will always
perform your best, be
your most productive,
and impress others
most when you are
working on something
you enjoy.

14. Sam Lightstone14
The gurus all agree(quotes from “Making it Big in Software: Get the job. Work the org. Become great.”)
“Find something that you really love doing and get excited
about doing, so that you almost feel as if you should be paying
them to come to work. I think you need to be happy to be
successful, not successful to be happy.”
—David Vaskevitch, Microsoft CTO
“Be sure that you like what you do at work and that you like the
people you work with—you’ll have to live with them for a long
time.”
—Bjarne Stroustrup, inventor of C++
“The more you can merge what you want to do with your job,
the better.”
—Steve Wozniak, inventor of the Apple computer
“I believe that I just work better if I enjoy what I’m doing. I
suspect that if anybody wants to be ‘the best’ at whatever they
do, they have to realize that it takes decades of hard work. And
the main way to actually keep doing decades of hard work is to
simply enjoy it so much that you don’t want to stop.”
—Linus Torvalds, original author of GNU/Linux
“…follow your passion. Most of all, be sure you have fun in the
process.”
—Grady Booch, IBM Fellow
“…if you can find a job that you really like, the better you’re
gonna be. You’re gonna be more productive. You’re going
to be happier. You’re going to be more satisfied in general
with what’s going on.”
—Ray Tomlinson, inventor of email
“Follow your bliss.”
—Jon Bentley, author of Programming Pearls
“For me, work is really enjoyable, making it hard to define
where work ends and fun begins.”
—Marissa Mayer, Google VP
“That’s what’s great—my career is a lot of fun. I don’t view
it as work. Computers have always been my hobby. The fact
that I get to go to work and work on my hobby and get paid
for it is just fantastic.”
—Mark Russinovich, Microsoft Technical Fellow
“What is really important is to make sure that they are
growing, contributing, and enjoying what they do.”
—John Schwarz, CEO Business Objects
“My number one piece of advice is to have fun.”
—James Gosling, inventor of Java, Sun VP and Fellow
Remarkably, most of the industry gurus I interviewed
for the book “Making it Big in Software” cited “fun”
and doing what you love as a central criteria for
success.

15. Sam Lightstone15
Career Planning

16. Sam Lightstone16
Idea #5: Be distinguished (and distinguishable)
(Data from Making it Big in Software: Get the job. Work the org. Become great.)
You may, unwisely, think your career prospects lie in
developing expertise in the most popular
programming languages and technical skills. But
popularity also means competition. Is that
necessarily the place to compete?

17. Sam Lightstone17
Idea #5: Differentiate yourself.
Try to differentiate yourself. For example, when Java
exploded in the mid-1990s, everybody became a Java
programmer, and the market became flooded with
cookie-cutter Java programmers.
It’s really hard for people to stand out as something
that isn’t easily replaceable in that world.
My whole career I have tried to stay away from that.
Operating system internals, while not considered
particularly sexy or part of the mainstream, have
allowed me to stand out because of the relatively few
people who go into that and the perception “Wow,
that’s really hard.”
Stay away from the mainstream and the crowds, and
find something that is gonna be stable—not just flash-
in-the-pan technology.
Mark Russinovich
Microsoft Technical Fellow, Windows Architect

18. Sam Lightstone18
Idea #6: Goal centric time management
Imagine you are dropped into this scene
with a canoe and a paddle. A disembodied
voice says to you… “Go”.
You are dropped into a canoe
in this breathtaking scene,
and a disembodied voice say
“Go! It’s urgent you must
proceed now!”. You look
forward, backwards, left and
right. All directions look
equally probable. You call out
“Where?! Where should I go?”
There is no reply. You pick a
direction somewhat arbitrarily
and paddle off not knowing
what to find.
The lake is a metaphor for
your career. How likely are
you to arrive at the ideal
destination if you don’t first
define what that is?
Like driving to work, or going
on a road trip, heading off in a
random direction is a pretty
weak strategy.
Define first where you are
headed, and you are much
more likely to arrive!

19. Sam Lightstone19
A classic business analogy on time management. A professor walks into a class and places a glass jug on the table in front of him. He asks
his class whether the jog is empty of full – and everyone agrees that (aside from air) the jus empty. He then pulls out several large rocks and
places as many rocks as possible into the jar. He asks the class whether the jug is empty or full. A mixed reaction – some point out there are
still spaces between the rocks. The professor takes out a large sack of sand, and proceeds to pour as much sand as possible into the jar.
The students are on to him with the “space between things” and refuse to accept that the jug is truly full. The professor then takes out a
pitcher of water, and pours as much water as possible in the jug, until the jug is completely overflowing with rocks, sand and water. At this
point everyone agrees the jug is full to the max.
Professor: “The jug is a metaphor for how you manage your time. With that in mind, what was the point of this demonstration”
Eager student: “Just like there were spaces between the big rocks for sand and water, similarly if we really manage our time well, we can fit
a lot more productivity into our day”.
Professor: “Exactly the opposite! The real point is this – if we had started with the sand and the water, we never would have had space
for the big rocks! Those big rocks are the big important things in your life. Make sure you prioritize them first. There is always a
lot of sand and water, the unimportant things, to fill your day if you let it.”

20. Sam Lightstone20
Idea #7: The Value of Measuring Value
RD, Marketing, Sales work to bring
new technology to market
1. Improve performance
2. Improve reliability
3. Make something easier
4. Make the impossible possible
Society has
trained us to
understand “new
and improved”
means anything
from life changing
breakthrough, to
barely measurable.
Usually the latter.
Much of what we do in high tech is intended to create new
technology that improves performance, makes technology
more reliable, increases simplicity, and if we are really
lucky makes the once impossible now possible. In short,
we make technology that is “New improved”.
Unfortunately, “New Improved” sounds like an
advertisement for laundry detergent! The career challenge:
Describe your contributions in concrete ways that strongly
convey the real value.

21. Sam Lightstone21
Idea #7: The Value of Measuring Value
A multitude of benefits:
1. Quantify value for your customers
2. Quantify your success inside your own company
3. Improve marketing.
4. Demystify your product planning.
5. Raise team morale.
0%
20%
40%
60%
80%
100%
% of
code
A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R
Companies
Supported Statements Unsupported Statements
A 2008 measurement of database
language compatibility measured
across 18 customer workloads. By
measuring the improvements the
new capabilities were transformed
from simple “new and improved
features” (sounds like laundry
detergent) to a whopping 98%
improvement that buoyed the
spirits of the engineering team,
fuelled new marketing programs,
and had real quantified meaning to
customers.
98%
compatibility

22. Sam Lightstone22
Idea #8: Why new projects startups fail
(There are many reasons…. this is just one worth reflecting on)
Good business needs more than
a great idea.
Smart startups look for talented
business leaders to join them
Yes, there are exceptions
Mark Zuckerberg (Facebook)
Bill Gates (Microsoft)
Steve Jobs (Apple)
These exceptions are really unfortunate, because they inspire too many
innovators with great ideas to think they can also be great business leaders.
As a result, great engineers often end up running terrible companies, and
fail to transition to success – despite having a great idea and even a great
product. A successful business is much more than a great product. You
need a successful strategy to bring technology to market, and to attract and
retain customers.

23. Sam Lightstone23
Idea #9: Invention is easy. Getting stuff done is hard.
Inspiration isn’t that rare in the end, but people
who have it and then actually follow through…
that’s rare.”
“My personal pet peeve is how many people
think the hard part is in the “big and hard
problems” or in some fluffy but important-
sounding thing like “innovation.”
Linus Torvalds
Creator of the Linux kernel
In fact, all the real work is in getting the details
right. It’s that “1% inspiration, 99%
perspiration” thing. People seem to think that
inspiration is the much bigger and important
part of the two, but I’ve come to believe that
while it’s important to have inspiration, where
people actually stumble is when they can’t
execute on that inspiration.

24. Sam Lightstone24
Idea #10: Build Knowledge About Other
Fields
You can learn a lot of creative
approaches by studying the esoteric.
In recent years, software innovations
related to self-managing software
systems have drawn heavily from
software techniques in:
control theory, economics, cybernetics,
and artificial intelligence.

25. Sam Lightstone25
Build Knowledge About Other Fields
We love our
software fonts!
Where did they come from?
Oh, how we love our fonts! Years ago I worked on font rendering for an image processing product with text overlays. I knew the
Windows font rendering APIs inside and out. I was amazed at the time how well engineers had mastered the ancient art of typography.
Not exactly a standard course in most computer science or engineering schools. Where did it all come from? Apparently, from Apple
co-founder and former CEO Steve Jobs!
Steve attended a Reed College, and famously floundered in his first semester. In his second semester he surveyed a course in
calligraphy – a particular strong point of the school. Not something he every expected to have much practical use for, but it was
interesting, and a good use of time while he was finding himself. Fast forward to the 1980s, and he is leading Apple in the development
of the next generation super easy, and user friendly personal computer – the Apple Macintosh. Why keep suffering with green
monospace characters on a black screen? It all came back to him - calligraphy, typography, serif and sans serif glyphs, proportional
and monospace characters. Once the Mac had these beautiful fonts to select from, Windows had to follow suit. The rest if history. A
great example of the power of combining disciplines (in this case software engineering and calligraphy).

26. Sam Lightstone26
Idea #11. Don’t Let Users and Markets Dictate
How to Do Things
“If I'd listened to customers, I'd have
given them a faster horse.”
--Henry Ford.
“A lot of times, people don’t know
what they want until you show it to
them.”
-- Steve Jobs
The market is a profound judge
The market creates demand and
passes judgment.
Markets can never predict or request
innovation.
Henry Ford (July 30, 1863 – April 7, 1947)
Founder of the Ford Motor
Company. Father of modern
assembly lines. His Model T
automobile revolutionized
transportation.

27. Sam Lightstone27
Idea #12. Don’t wait until you’re ready
“I grew into the role”
Sign of a career that could have been more.
Always be ready to stretch and challenge
yourself.
Evaluate opportunities, in part, by your emotional
reaction.
1. Terrified by the scope and risk
2. Nervous about the scope and risk
3. Comfortable for the scope and risk
If you aren’t nervous about your
next role, you probably waited too
long.

28. Sam Lightstone28
“… you should always do something that
you’re not ready to do. Doing something
you’re not ready to do means you’re
taking a step forward, you’re going to
learn something new, and you’re going to
grow.”
Marissa Mayer
Currently CEO of Yahoo! Inc
Then Vice President, Search Products Google Inc.
Idea #12. Waiting until you’re ready is waiting too long

29. Sam Lightstone29
Social Dynamics

30. Sam Lightstone30
Idea13: You’ve been hard at work.
Perception:
“Why doesn’t the management
team recognize my contributions?
Even my coworkers seem to take
my hard work for granted.”
Reality:
It’s your job to make sure your
manager and your teammates know
what you’ve accomplished.
~RULE~
Don’t expect
recognition for
work that nobody
knows about.

31. Sam Lightstone31
Idea #14: The secret influence of management peers
Evaluations
Not everyone can be rated high. Not
everyone can be rated low.
Evaluations are doomed to
subjectivity and organizational
conflict.
Try to keep your boss’s peers
informed about your work.
Within reason.
You manager won’t be able to easily give you a top evaluation without his/
her peers agreeing
This consideration is proportional to the size of your organization.
~ RULE ~
It’s difficult to get full recognition for
work that only your manager knows about.

32. Sam Lightstone32
Idea #15. What goes around comes around
So be nice to everyone.
Engage in acts of random kindness
Be complimentary (sincerely… don’t suck up)
Avoid gossip
Comparable: children crossing
the road
What if only 90% of the things
you say in private stay private?

33. Sam Lightstone33
Idea #16: Vector calculus and burning bridges
Everyone in an organization is
moving along a career vector.
• People accelerate, decelerate over
the course of years.
• Players come and go.
Consequence:
• People you work with today who are
your peers or juniors may one day
be your employee, boss, or control
key resources you depend on .
Never burn your bridges for short
term gain.

34. Sam Lightstone34
“It far exceeded my
expectations!”
Dr. Peter Grogono
Professor of Computer Science
Concordia University
“By far the best career guide I
have ever read.”
Amazon.com reader
Praise for Making it Big in Software
“The interviews alone are
worth the price of admission.”
Eric Lundquist, eWeek.com
“ ‘Software is an amazing
place to build a career.’ If you
agree with this sentiment that
opens Sam Lightstone's book
you are likely to enjoy reading
it and find it motivating.”
Sue Gee,
i-programmer.com
“For me, reading this book
was a blissful experience from
cover to cover.”
Mike Riley, Dr. Dobb’s
“… I'm impressed by how
empowered I am after reading
just the first few chapters!
Seriously, I feel like coding the
equivalent of punching a bear
in the face!”
Chris Toohey,
Dominoguru.com
“I've never seen a book as
comprehensive and instantly
useful as this one... Seriously,
this is the book.“
David J. Steinberg,
Executive Vice President
and General Manager,
Starz Animation
“I've never seen a book as
comprehensive and instantly
useful as this one... Seriously,
this is the book.”
David J. Steinberg
Executive Vice President
and General Manager,
Starz Animation
November 3, 2010
#1 in Books Education Vocational Guidance
#1 in Books Business Investing High-Tech
#1 in Books Business Investing Vocational

35. Sam Lightstone35
Conclusions
Your technical skills and brilliance are just the
beginning.
Technical skills count. Soft skills count
The mix is your choice
Set your own course. Don’t let the river carry you.
Consider the human dynamics of how businesses and
organizations work
“Be
goal-­‐oriented...
You
don’t
need
to
have
had
courses…
Whatever
it
is,
just
trust
yourself
that
you
don’t
need
a
book—
you
can
write
the
book.
…Keep
in
mind
that
almost
all
the
revolu5onary
great
advances,
the
big
home
runs
in
technology,
come
from
very
young
people
in
school
or
not
so
many
years
out
of
school.
You’ve
got
the
energy
to
follow
it
through…”
-­‐-­‐
Steve
Wozniak,
Inventor
of
the
Apple
computer,
cofounder
of
Apple
Inc.
(from
Making
it
Big
in
SoEware)

36. Sam Lightstone36
Making it Big in IBM
Sam Lightstone
Distinguished Engineer
IBM Master Inventor
IBM Canada
e-mail: light@ca.ibm.com
April 14, 2014