January 9, 2024 • 51 mins
Have you ever considered the human story behind the code that powers our daily digital experiences? I had the pleasure of sitting down with William A. Adams, whose journey from a 12-year-old self-taught programmer to a key player at Microsoft is as inspiring as it is instructive. As we traverse William's path, you'll be enthralled by tales of innovation, the birth of AI tools revolutionizing programming, and the foresight to see beyond the keyboard to a future where coding is an entirely new beast. His beginnings may resonate with many, but the trajectory of his career—marked by curiosity, resilience, and a drive to make technology more inclusive—is uniquely his own.
Our conversation takes an intimate turn as William recounts his early entrepreneurial endeavors that hinted at the business mogul he was to become. The narrative flows into his strategic leap into Microsoft, navigating the choppy waters of legal battles and economic uncertainty. With two decades and a wealth of experience under his belt, William recalls the personal and professional milestones that have shaped not just his life but also the tech landscape. From fostering talent globally to the deeply personal pride in mentoring, William paints a vivid picture of a life intertwined with the pulse of technological progress.
As we wrap up our dialogue, William shares the philosophical shift from coder to mentor and the vision to impact the world beyond Microsoft's walls. The insights gleaned are both practical and profound as we discuss the importance of personal branding and networking in a developer's career and the evolving hiring landscape in tech. William's story is a powerful reminder that continuous learning and a passion for innovation are key in a field that never stands still. Join us for a journey that's about much more than code—it's about the human touch that shapes our technological world.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
William Adams (00:00):
Today.
As far as the skillsdevelopment is concerned, I'd
say learn new some AI, learn howto use the modern tools chat,
gpt or whatever.
Co-pilot these things.
Even I use these because thefirst time I used co-pilot I was
like, oh, this is going to makeme 30 percent more productive
(00:29):
and oh, wait a minute, inanother three years I won't be
typing out a keyboard at all.
So, dear programmer, understandthat you typing out a keyboard
is not going to be the way it isin a very short amount of time
and it's going to be way fasterthan you think.
Tim Bourguignon (00:51):
Hello and welcome to Devilburst Journey,
the podcast bringing you themaking of stories of successful
software developers to help youon your upcoming journey.
I'm your host, tim Boulgigno.
On this episode, I receiveWilliam A Adams.
William is an award-winningdiversity and inclusion
innovator and engineeringtrailblazer and philanthropist.
(01:14):
After rolling out critical XMLcode globally in many of
Microsoft's core products, hewas named the first technical
advisor to the CTO, kevin Scott.
His career in softwareengineering spans over 30 years,
made of entrepreneurship,innovation and well actively
working toward creating moreopportunities and being an ally
(01:39):
for others.
William, I'm thrilled to haveyou on the show today.
Welcome, devjern.
William Adams (01:45):
Thank you for having me and my hello as print.
Hello world, I was being Lua.
Tim Bourguignon (01:54):
He did it.
He did it.
He said hello in a programminglanguage.
Yeah, great, loving you.
Thank you, william, but beforewe come to your story, I want to
thank the terrific listenerswho support the show.
Every month you are keeping theDevJernay lights up.
If you would like to join thisfine crew and help me spend more
time on finding phenomenalguests than editing audio tracks
(02:18):
, please go to our website,devjourneyinfo and click on the
Support Me on Patreon button.
Even the smallest contributionsare giant steps toward a
sustainable DevJernay journey.
Thank you, and now back totoday's guest.
So, william, as you know, theshow exists to help the
listeners understand what yourstory looked like and imagine
(02:41):
how to shape their own future.
So, as is customary on the show, let's go back to your
beginnings.
Where would you place the startof your DevJernay?
William Adams (02:49):
Yeah, my DevJernay is interesting and
there is a difference between myDevJernay and my Dev career.
But my Dev journey like whendid I start writing code?
It was when I was like 12 yearsold and I'm 59.
So as 40, I can't even countthat high 40 some odd years ago
(03:12):
On a Commodore PET computer andthis was right in the very
beginning of when PCs were beingcreated Commodore PET, apple
One, trs-80, atari, whatever.
I taught myself how to write infirst machine code and then
assembly language.
Then there's a basic compileror a compiler, a basic thing.
(03:35):
That's where I started.
And it started because I had anuncle who worked for the Navy
and he said hey, you want thiscomputer and, being the
precocious little kid that I,was, I was like yeah, you know,
and there are no other kids onmy block who had computers.
(03:56):
It was such a new thing, right?
So that's where my Dev journeystarted.
It was just self-taught.
My uncle gave me this computerand I just started hacking, if
you will right.
Tim Bourguignon (04:09):
There wasn't anything else to do back then
with computers.
You got a prompt and then youhad to do it yourself.
William Adams (04:15):
Yeah, everything.
And I mean this is the dayswhere my storage medium was
literally cassette tapes.
Right, you stick a cassettetape in, you type up a program,
you hit Save.
If you made a single mistake inthat whole program, you got to
do it all over again.
Oh yeah, you know.
So yeah, cassette tapes.
(04:35):
And I don't know how muchmemory that thing had.
It probably had like 8K of RAM.
I mean 8K.
That's like you can't evenspell print in 8K.
So very small but very powerful.
Tim Bourguignon (04:53):
It was indeed what attracted you, or what kept
you locked in on this machineAt 12 years old, the only kid on
your block having a computer.
William Adams (05:02):
Yeah, I mean, it was just a.
I was before that.
I was the kind of kid who hadlike erector sets.
Erector set modern day would belike Legos or whatever but
construction kits.
I had purchased a chemistry setfor myself, those electronic
kits from Radio Shack, a physicskid.
(05:24):
I was just an inventive littlekid.
This is all pretty young.
So just to feed that desire,and I also did sports, and of
course I went to school, allthat sort of stuff, and I played
with my friends outside.
And then when I came inside andit's you're inside now, this is
(05:44):
what I did, this was my hobby.
So I was a very shy child and Ijust it's like, well, computers
, that's something that's justme in the machine, and it
tickled my brain and I couldmake it do what I wanted and it
was just a match made in heaven,I suppose.
Did you imagine at?
Tim Bourguignon (06:04):
some point or early on that this could become
your kind of small commondenominator of your life story.
William Adams (06:16):
Not really.
I mean up until that point Iwas always, and I remember this
distinctly because a firemancame to our elementary school
one time, like in the third orfourth grade I think it was the
fourth grade and he's like, heput the whole fireman's outfit
on me and all this sort of stuffand he's like well, son, what
(06:37):
do you want to be when you growup?
And I'm like I want to own anelectronics company.
You know it's like oh, I'lltake that outfit off of you.
So where I lived in this placecalled Placentia, which is this
tiny little town in SouthernCalifornia, we were surrounded
(06:58):
by aerospace.
So the kids I went to schoolwith some of them, their parents
either worked for RockwellInternational or Hughes
International or one of theaerospace companies down there,
or their family were migrantworkers or other blue collar
(07:21):
workers or whatever.
So there was this mix in ourneighborhood of just regular old
people and engineering peopleand I think I just gravitated
towards the engineering stuff,even though my parents weren't
engineers.
My dad fixed typewriters so Igot exposure to machinery and
electronics and stuff.
So I always thought I was goingto do electronics.
(07:45):
We didn't have computer scienceat that time.
It wasn't a thing.
Computers were not a commonthing in life, so you couldn't
really think I'm going to have acareer in computers.
It's like there is no suchthing.
You mean you want to be a keypunch operator?
I mean that's like maybe asecretary or something that's
(08:08):
not a career for a young manlike me, so that didn't exist
until much later.
Tim Bourguignon (08:14):
So how did you pick which way to go to study or
to start?
William Adams (08:20):
So I just did that because it was fun.
And in high school a friend ofmine and I, a few more people
had computers.
Like by then we had the TRSAD,the Apple, and I got a CommRor
64, the next computer up andthere was a terminal at our
school that connected to somecentral office mainframe as a
(08:43):
mini computer For our schooldistrict.
So we started a computer cluband we would program Simple
things and basic.
This is all self-taught.
Our teachers didn't knowanything about computers.
You know, we were the ones thatlearned about the computers and
taught them.
So you know, we were justmessing around.
And then in 1982 I went off toUC Berkeley to study Electrical
(09:10):
engineering, computer science,and still, computer science was
like We'll say the word computerscience, but there's no science
to computers.
At that point, right, the drawwas the electrical engineering
and ah, you're gonna, you'regonna program those computer
things.
So again, I didn't really studycomputer.
(09:32):
We have learned some amount ofalgorithms, but yet to think in
those days is 1982, right, a Lotof the algorithms that we have
now, some of them were alreadythere, but a lot of stuff you
take for granted today didn'texist, it was being invented.
So I learned this new languagecalled Pascal.
(09:52):
There's actually a coursetaught by the guy who wrote the
compiler.
You know one of the earliest wehad this in, called p systems.
It was one of the Systems thatran stuff.
There was this other languagecalled C, you know, and you
could play with that.
You learned it on your ownbecause you're doing hardware.
And then you had to program thehardware chips.
(10:14):
So you had to learn C orassembly or whatever.
But that wasn't taught.
You just pick that up right, wewere flipping switches on PDP
10s Switches what are youtalking about?
So to input a number, there areliterally switches that
represented the bits and you hadto flip them up and down for
ones and zeros and then say load, you've looked this third one
(10:36):
load.
So we did that for a semesteror a year, a quarter, whatever
it was.
And then finally we gotterminals and we had a Vax
machine or a PDP, whatever, andwe had line printers and other
sort of stuff.
So those are just the earliestdays of like computer science.
(10:56):
It was just fumbling aboutlearning some very basic stuff.
This was the birth of thislanguage now called TCL tickle.
That was invented by a guy atBerkeley and later others.
Things came out of Berkeley butyou know, like Unix, the C
programming language, just allsorts of things were happening
at that time and I just kind offloated along with it.
(11:19):
And then Silicon Valley ingeneral was just the place,
right we're.
All sorts of things were beingbirthed.
So I didn't really in college Imean, yeah, eecs, but really
this was the start of my career.
My brother and I decided he's acouple years older than me, I
(11:42):
was the manager of the computerstore at UC Berkeley for a while
and we I was sellingMacintosh's right when they came
out the Macintosh computer, sothat was kind of the entree like
oh hey, there's this computerthing happening and I, my first
job besides the manager thingwas Teaching people how to use
(12:06):
computers.
So imagine TRS 80s and Appletwos.
And I'm teaching Visicow orWord pro or word perfect or
whatever the word, word star,whatever the word thing was.
And Fourth, programming.
I'm teaching this to officeworkers.
Right, this new computer islike well, you're gonna need to
(12:28):
learn Visicow.
Visicow, one of the early, well, the first Spreadsheet
spreadsheet yeah right.
So I was teaching and then.
So when my brother and I gotthe idea is like, let's start
our own company, becauseEveryone in Silicon Valley was
creating companies at that time,and at first we thought we were
gonna teach Computers becausethat's what I knew, right, but
(12:54):
as it turned out, there was moremoney to be made by doing
custom software development.
So we ended up I mean, wepublished a magazine of our own
for a while, but we ended updoing custom software
development For one client thatwe had in the building that we,
our office, was in, and and thenthat evolved to hey Look,
(13:16):
there's next computer.
Steve Jobs left Apple to formnext computers and we jumped on
that.
It's like let's do softwarearound the next computer.
And we were big fish in thattiny pond, had some big custom
software stuff.
We did off the shelf softwareand that, you know, that wasn't
huge commercial success, but itcarried us along for a few years
(13:40):
and then eventually, in 1998, Iwent off to Microsoft because
the jig was up with the wholenext thing and I had done a
couple of other things besidesthat, one being Telegent, which
is a no one would remember thatit was a joint between Apple and
IBM, actually and then theB-Box, which was Jean-Louis
(14:03):
Gasset, a guy who left Apple,created this company called B.
They had a machine and I workedfor them for a couple of years
and then, eventually, I went toMicrosoft to start XML.
Tim Bourguignon (14:15):
Wow, before we get there, I want to stick to
the history of Sigmund Valles.
William Adams (14:21):
Oh, okay, yeah, it's a lot of history and I
clout right through it.
There's some actual inventionsin there that are really
interesting at that time, butyeah.
Tim Bourguignon (14:32):
No worries, what I'm interested in is you
said okay.
Your brother said, hey, let's,let's create a company.
Yeah, you mentioned it as if itwas something absolutely normal
to do.
Yeah, was it in your blood toreally be an entrepreneur?
I guess Already back then.
William Adams (14:49):
Yeah, I don't know why.
I mean it probably started withmy brother, actually, when we
were back just little kids, so Iwas probably eight, nine, 10
years old, so he was probably 10, 11, 12 at most.
He had a newspaper route.
So delivering newspapers tohouses, right, and it's a pretty
(15:10):
brutal job for a little kid.
It's like they drop a pile ofnewspapers at your house.
You're responsible for takingeach paper, rolling it up,
putting the rubber band aroundit, sticking it in your delivery
bag and doing your route,delivering them right, and
sometimes I'd help him roll thepapers, I'd help him deliver
(15:31):
sometimes, sometimes I'd do thedeliveries and then you had to
go and collect the fees on amonthly basis.
You walk around, it's like, oh,you owe me $350, and you know
whatever.
I think that was really thestart because and I don't know
why he decided that wassomething he could do.
I don't know how he got into itreally, but that was the start.
(15:51):
He had this newspaper route andwe just did it.
And then we moved to adifferent neighborhood at some
point and we had to installsprinklers in our house, water
sprinklers for the lawn, right,and we did it ourselves, just me
and my brother.
So again, I'm like 10 or 11.
(16:12):
He's like 12 or 13.
And we did ours and it turnedout all right and this was a
brand new housing complex.
Tim Bourguignon (16:23):
So we went to our neighbors and said hey, can
we do yours?
William Adams (16:27):
Here's the price.
Here's a picture of the, not apicture.
We actually walked around witha manifold, which is where all
the valves are.
I was like we'll install it.
Here's what the manifold lookslike.
So we're sales we're theselittle teenagers and we're
selling lawn sprinkler servicesto our neighbors and they're
like yeah, ok, yeah, so I thinkit was just baked into us.
(16:50):
I don't know why.
It's not like my mom was anentrepreneur or my dad, but they
certainly didn't discourage usfrom doing that stuff.
My father passed away when Iwas seven, so he wasn't there
for this stuff, but mom wasthere, and I guess mom just said
well, as long as you're not introuble, that sounds good to me.
Tim Bourguignon (17:12):
So that's true.
It beats roaming around anddoing nasty stuff.
William Adams (17:18):
Yeah, I mean, we were into sports and being
little entrepreneurs and I thinkthat's what just carried
forward, because we were alwaysentrepreneurs, so there's no
reason not to think we could doit.
Tim Bourguignon (17:34):
All right, that's true and I think it
really carried forward.
But before we come to that partof the story, there's Microsoft
in between.
I hear you being your own boss,creating companies, working
with Next, working withdifferent companies and doing
probably very interesting stuff,and suddenly deciding to go to
(17:55):
this growing giant.
He said 98.
That was already a giant.
What decided, oh, what pushedyou to jump on that ship and not
be your own boss for a while?
Also, we probably had somecompanies on the side during
that time.
William Adams (18:10):
But I'll shut up and let you talk.
Oh, it was just a practicalthing.
So in 98, so I was at B and theykind of lost this battle, there
was this time, this briefmoment in time, a couple of
meetings where Apple and youkind of had to know that Apple
(18:33):
had kicked out Steve Jobs a fewyears earlier and John Scully
was in the leadership and theyweren't doing that great, so
they went Steve Jobs back.
But there was this brief timewhere it was like, is Apple
going to buy Next or are theygoing to buy B?
There was this actualconversation, people going back
(18:55):
and forth, and in the end theybought Next and I think the
calculus was essentially, weneed Steve Jobs.
The B technology was awesome,but there's no beating Steve
Jobs.
So they bought Next or Nextbought them and the rest is
history.
So I was at B at that time andso we lost essentially.
(19:19):
So our path to success wasessentially cut off.
It's like, well, if we don'tget bought by Apple, we're going
to try to make it our own.
And they just didn't.
So I left them because I had achild at that time who was like
two or three.
It's like, all right, this hasbeen great, but these are my
(19:40):
earning years.
I'm 30-something, 33.
I need to go someplace where Ican actually make a lot of money
, because between 30 and40-something, those are your
most productive years forearning money.
So I looked at a bunch of stuffin Silicon Valley and I looked
(20:02):
at Microsoft, because a friendof mine called me up and said
hey, are you looking for a job?
We're doing this XML thing upto Microsoft.
Do you want to?
Are you interested?
And I was like I hadn't reallythought about it.
But OK, so I went and did aninterview and I concluded that
it's like well, microsoft, Imean, they're being invested by
(20:23):
the Department of Justice,they're talking about splitting
them up, monopoly, all that sortof stuff, and we're about to
hit a recession and there's awhole dot-com boom is happening.
And my calculus was essentiallyOK, microsoft, either they're
going down in flames or they'regoing to rise like a phoenix.
(20:44):
Either way, it's going to be apretty good ride.
So here I go.
Tim Bourguignon (20:51):
That's a good approach to life.
I would say yeah.
William Adams (20:53):
And it turns out they were pretty resilient to
the recession.
I didn't lose my job and for 24years I didn't lose my job and
they rose like a phoenix.
They didn't go down in flamesand I had 24 productive years
there.
I recently retired in case Ididn't say that I left there
(21:17):
last year.
Tim Bourguignon (21:18):
OK, you didn't reach the 25 mark.
William Adams (21:22):
Yeah, and this was a calculus as well.
It's like should I stick aroundfor 25?
If you stick around for 25, youget your name on a plaque and a
wall in the conference center,exactly.
And I talked to a friend ofmine who's been there for like
30 years and he's like, yeah, Igot my name on the wall.
I've never seen it, I don'tcare, yeah.
Tim Bourguignon (21:39):
It's not worth waiting around for another year.
William Adams (21:42):
Maybe for the money but not really.
I was done.
It's like no, I got otherthings to do.
Tim Bourguignon (21:47):
I hear you.
So when you look back overthose 24 years, where are the
five, six things that reallystand out?
We say, hey, this is reallywhat I committed to memory and I
will remember forever.
William Adams (22:02):
The number one thing is people.
That's a easy one, because bythe end certainly I was probably
much more interested in thetransformative effects of what I
could do for people's lives,both inside the company and
across the world.
And we can get into some ofthat stuff.
That's number one is just thetransformative effect you can
(22:25):
have on people's lives.
Any bit of code that I everwrote at Microsoft was like, ah,
it's lost to history.
It's like how important was it?
Within five to 10 years it'sgone.
So now there are pieces of codethat I was the dev manager for
that are still in the systemssystemxml, systemdata,
(22:49):
systemlink, these are all things.
That is like you write newC-sharp code.
That's the first stuff thatshows up.
So it's like I'm proud of thatand that was all killer stuff.
But I think just being able tostart things with people.
Another one, a big one, is thisthing called the LEAP program,
(23:13):
which has to do with hiringwomen and minorities, at least
at the time.
Now they say very polished wordsabout what it means, but at the
time it was about we need tohire more women and
underrepresented minorities.
So I created this or co-createdthis program with an HR peer at
(23:35):
the time and that really showedthe way for, or silenced the
mantra of, oh, we can't hiremore women and minorities they
don't exist, it's like reallyhave to climb in.
It's women.
So that's not true and as faras underrepresented minorities
are concerned, we're just notlooking in the right places.
(23:57):
So let me show you how to do it.
So we cracked that code, if youwill, and now it's like seven
years on, eight years on, andthey're still doing it, and it's
a federally accreditedapprenticeship program and all
this sort of stuff.
So those are the things I'mmost proud of is just things
related to people.
I mean very personal thingslike oh, I helped this one
(24:19):
person who was suffering with anunbearable husband but she was
brilliant, a brilliant scientistand an awesome coder and just
giving her encouragement so thatshe could go yeah.
I'm actually worthwhile and Ican do this thing and I'm really
good at it.
Tim Bourguignon (24:38):
It's like yes you are, it's like these
personal stories.
Absolutely.
William Adams (24:44):
Code wise.
It's just been everything.
It's like okay, I've worked onXML.
Plenty of people cringe and runfrom that.
I was like, ah, I embrace it.
If you look at your Worddocuments today, or PowerPoint
or Excel, they're actually justXML in a zip file.
So thank you, yeah.
Tim Bourguignon (25:10):
Yeah, it's the backbone of the internet as well
and there's kind of a similar.
William Adams (25:15):
There was one of those things like Jason came
along and there was like, oh,this is how much better than XML
.
It's like, yeah, and you'retrying to make Jason look like
XML now.
So and of course, people beforeus before we did XML.
There's this standard calledASN.1.
And those people look at XMLand say you're just trying to
create ASN.1.
(25:35):
It's a binary format of datarepresentation that existed way
before that.
Tim Bourguignon (25:42):
It's either standing on the shoulders of
giants or get off my loan.
It's either one.
William Adams (25:49):
Yeah, so you know me and Copa Pennants for
creating the abomination that isXML.
But you're welcome, you'rewelcome, you're welcome.
Tim Bourguignon (25:59):
No, no.
So yeah, that is real true.
When you look back, you reallyforget about all the
technicalities, the project, thehardship and everything.
You just see faces.
You see faces of the people whoreally matter, the people who
you matter to during their lifeand you're able to do something
at one point that reallyunlocked something, and this is
what sticks.
This is real.
William Adams (26:19):
And let me just mention a couple more, because
maybe this will be food forfodder in a little bit, Please,
please.
So I did the LEAP program.
Before I did that, I actuallylived in India for three years
to help create what we call theengineering excellence.
So I taught all of theengineers, all the college, all
the college hire engineers forfive weeks before they went into
(26:40):
their dev teams for two and ahalf years, so 2006 to 2009,.
I helped essentially build theIndia Development Center and
then later in the last sevenyears not the last five years I
did a similar thing not quitethe same, but a similar thing to
(27:02):
help us create dev centers inKenya and Nigeria, where we
didn't have them before.
Those are really transformativebecause it's like India was
already existed, but it wasgrowing fast.
Kenya and Nigeria didn't existat all, so it was bootstrapping
and I helped that process ofbootstrapping those development
(27:23):
centers.
Hugely transformative when yousay I'm going to bring these
high paying jobs to you insteadof removing your brains from
your country and bringing themto the US.
So, we were very explicit likethis is not a brain drain
strategy, this is an enhancementstrategy.
(27:43):
We want the jobs to stay herebecause it creates a whole
ecosystem of new people and newopportunities.
As opposed to oh, you need yourbest and brightest to help
yourselves, Well, let's juststeal them from you.
So I'm pretty proud of thatwork as well.
Tim Bourguignon (28:07):
Is this something that Microsoft does a
lot Really going into differentcountries and treating their dev
centers there instead ofbringing them to US?
William Adams (28:17):
No, and I would say I'm just trying to think
through rapidly how our variousdevelopment centers have been
created.
Africa was the firstintentional one like that.
We have other smallerdevelopment centers that come up
(28:39):
and, like Mexico's, is startingto get a little something and
whatever.
But when you look at placeslike India, for example, well,
india already had some stuff andwe had plenty of Indian
engineers.
They went home and there was anintention and it's like I'm
here.
Okay, everyone's going to starthiring China.
(29:00):
There was a very specific lab.
It started with Microsoftresearch, so we were hiring a
specific person, hiring theirlab and then building up from
there.
But you already had anecosystem there, right, boston,
boston and the United States.
We buy a company.
That company has 100 employees.
(29:20):
You build from that.
Kenya, nigeria, is completelydifferent.
We didn't have anything.
So we just very intentionallysaid we want to create here
because of these following fiveor six reasons, one being just
talent is all over the place andthey're very young, very smart
just no opportunities.
(29:41):
And yeah, we had some Africanengineers, but they were all in
the US, so we didn't have anecosystem there at all and we
didn't buy a company or anythinglike that.
We just said I personally hiredfour or five people in Kenya
and said you are now the nucleusof what we're going to build in
Kenya right.
And now I'm going to get ourother teams here.
(30:02):
There was a guy from Windowswho came in as the big dog and
said all right, all right, wegot this, now we're going to
bring everybody.
And then he brought in Officeand Visual Studio and now the
whole company's there.
Right, but it was a very intent.
This was not the way Microsofttypically does it.
(30:22):
Usually we go and buy a companyor something and that's why we
end up somewhere, but this wasvery explicitly like no, we're
going to Kenya and Nigeriabecause we need to be there.
Tim Bourguignon (30:33):
Right, this is awesome.
It was really awesome.
William Adams (30:36):
It was quite different.
Tim Bourguignon (30:39):
Indeed, indeed, it's really different from what
I lived.
At some point I was interestedin working for Microsoft and I
looked around in Germany and inEurope and there's very little
development in Europe.
It's really sales here and thewhole marketing is here and
everything.
There's some advocacy as well,but that's it.
William Adams (30:55):
And I thought everything was in the US.
No, I mean, there's places likeRomania.
There's an app posted inRomania and it was again.
We bought some company andfound out, wow, there's a whole
bunch of programmers here.
But yeah, it is strange thatEurope is like we went to do AI
in Cambridge because there's abunch of AI in Cambridge.
(31:16):
So you know, that's what Ithink.
Yeah, we heard about that.
Tim Bourguignon (31:22):
There was something in the news a few
years ago.
How did you grow into beingable to do this?
I mean, we started your storyat Microsoft, writing XML and
really being hands-on programmer, I would say, although it might
not be your exact title by then, but let's take it.
William Adams (31:43):
Well, when I first joined the company in 98,
I was a programmer and one ofthe first things I worked on was
this thing called XSLT, whichis just a thing related to XML.
But very soon because you thinkbefore that I was the VP of
engineering and my own companyof four people.
But very soon it turns out thatI was a good leader.
(32:07):
So I pretty quickly turned intothe dev manager for the group
that I was in and spent a lot ofyears building, hiring, shaping
, transforming productdevelopment, less coding, more
of the just being a goodengineering manager.
(32:28):
I spent a lot of years doingthat until I went off to India
and then it was doing it at alarge scale, the stepping stone.
Some of it is just choice andsome of it is just opportunity.
So I chose to.
When we did that first XML team,there was a lot of stress and
(32:51):
our leader left and no onewanted to follow him because he
was such a tyrant.
I saw the group is like, oh,this is going to fall apart.
I just stepped up and said,well, okay, I'm one of the
leaders, I know how to lead, soI'm one of the leaders and
here's two or three other people.
We are the management leaders.
(33:11):
That went on for a couple ofyears and I built a pretty good
dev team that took care of lotsof different things, not just
XML.
Tim Bourguignon (33:21):
That's how.
William Adams (33:22):
I got into the engineering management if you
will, and that shifts yourresponsibilities, because now
you're worried about people morethan code.
As a manager, I did it's like.
Well, you hire really smartpeople.
Why are you still trying towrite code you don't need to.
They do.
Tim Bourguignon (33:44):
Did you look back while doing this transition
, saying, what am I doing?
William Adams (33:49):
Why don't I just stick around in front of my
keyboard and just just no, itwas an interesting time because
I was, as a natural person, veryshy child.
I grew out of the shyness alittle bit, but still very much
an introvert, and I forcedmyself to be not more of an
(34:13):
extrovert but to be moreinteractive.
Right, I was on a journey.
I'm 40-something, I'm comingout of my personal shell.
First time I'm interacting withOmega Corporation.
There's a lot to learnpersonally in that space.
At that time I didn't.
(34:35):
By the time I got to India, whenI was in India, I actually
ended up writing a lot of code,because the way I would teach
the students is I'd say okay,look, you need to learn this
language.
C-sharp here's a product.
It's 80, 90 percent done.
You've got to write the rest ofthe code.
Here's the featured list ofthings you should do.
(34:56):
I wrote and this was thebeginning of C-sharp I wrote a
ton of code related to usingOpenGL, which is a 3D graphics
programming thing, not DirectX.
I wrote a whole shim layer forusing C-sharp with OpenGL.
Then we did programs usingOpenGL and the GPU and all that
(35:18):
sort of stuff.
I did this multi-user networkcommunications framework, all
the stuff you do today with well, what we're doing right now
recording each other across theplanet.
So this is in the early 2000s,so 2007, 2008.
(35:41):
So I wrote a lot of code then.
I was just a one-man codingmachine.
My stuff is actually on GitHubfrom back then.
I eventually uploaded it.
But, yeah, I got my coding itchsatisfied in that way, Because
by then I had been a manager forquite a few years and I was
(36:04):
like, I think I can code.
Tim Bourguignon (36:10):
So I did.
William Adams (36:10):
So I went back to coding, but at the same time I
pulled along this trainingpeople how to do their jobs
thing.
I did that again when I leftMicrosoft and I code today
because it's just a hobby.
It's like exercise.
You got to do 50 push-ups, yougot to write 200 lines of code,
(36:31):
right.
Tim Bourguignon (36:33):
Yeah, amen to that.
What's convinced you to leaveMicrosoft and say now is the
time I need to do something else?
William Adams (36:45):
So 24 years and being there that long.
On occasion I would give talksto various people, groups,
either through LEAP or otheravenues, where people would ask
me either because it's well,you've been here 20 years, why
have you been here so long?
What would make you leave?
Blah, blah, blah.
And I've tell people since thebeginning of the time I was
(37:07):
there in 1998, every two yearswhen I went in 98, I said I'll
be here for two years and I'llsee what's next, right?
So every two years and I didthis religiously every two years
I would look up and go.
Is this still the best thingfor me to be doing?
Does this satisfy my life?
Is it the best deal?
Is it?
(37:28):
I didn't want to go to sleepand then wake up 30 years later
and go wow, well, that was acareer that was fun.
What did I do?
Nothing.
So every two years, I askmyself the question is this the
best use of my time?
Is this the best bang for thebuck?
Is this the most impactfulthing I could be doing?
(37:48):
Right?
And it's not just about codefor Microsoft, it's like I'm
more than just a Microsoft coder.
I'm William A Adams right, whatis my life Right?
So every two years so in thelast two years, 22 to 24, I
asked that question and I waslike huh, I'm not sure.
(38:11):
And I also noticed that I wasstarting to repeat things.
Right, it's like wait a minuteteaching young programmers how
to program and how to run a team.
I did that 20 years ago and I'mdoing it again.
And I'm not wanting to climbthe corporate ladder.
I don't want to become a CVPbecause that's a bridge too far.
(38:33):
It's like I don't want to bethat invested in this thing.
So I'm going to start repeating.
I think I'm done and at thesame time, there's a bigger
mission.
So I did the leap thing andthat enabled lots of people and
continues to enable people.
Why don't I leverage and buildoff of that and do it for the
broader world?
(38:54):
I did the Africa thing, it'slike, well, why can't I do that
for more people?
Now it's different when youdon't work for mega corporation,
but there's still plenty ofvalue I can bring to the world
and you can't do it necessarilyin the confines of Microsoft.
Now I can work with them, but atthe end of the day, they got to
make money for them.
So it's like, hey, why don't wedo this program that does the
(39:17):
blah, blah, blah?
It's like that's not really inline with Azure and artificial
intelligence.
So you run into more and morebarriers and, even though
they'll let you keep your joband they'll keep paying me, they
didn't want me to leave.
It's like why are you leaving?
Why are you leaving?
But it's like because what Iwant to do now is not in line
(39:40):
with where you guys need to go,Right, and that's why I left.
It's like, okay, and it took awhile for me to actually, I
would say it took me the lastyear to separate, because it's
like I've been doing somethingfor 24 years, Right, you don't
just cut it off cold turkey.
So it took me a while to get toa point where I was like,
(40:01):
finally, it's time for me to goRight.
And then I've spent the lastyear really working hard on my
own personal mission, codinglike crazy.
You know.
It's like who am I reallywithout the trappings of the
mega corporation.
Do I still got it and doesanyone care?
Right?
Tim Bourguignon (40:23):
Do you want to tell us about it?
William Adams (40:25):
Oh, about what I'm doing now.
Tim Bourguignon (40:26):
Absolutely yeah .
William Adams (40:27):
Oh yeah.
So what I'm doing now is, well,william A Adams, but the
umbrella of things I'm doing iscalled Wave Studio and it's
essentially what we call aventure studio, which is
slightly different than a VC.
A VC is a fund that has money.
They throw to 100 differentventures and they see what
(40:50):
sticks and they're looking for100 x improvement or payout and
then they move on to the next100.
Right, a venture studio is morelike we're investing in people,
so there might be 10individuals.
It's like well, I want to investin you because you have some
good idea, let's try that.
(41:10):
That one didn't work out, let'sdo the next one.
But while we're, while we'vegot you in the studio, let's
teach you how to dance and singand present you know.
Let's teach you the skillsnecessary to be that
entrepreneur, because otherwisewhere are you going to learn
that?
And my focus is on women andminorities, because that's where
(41:35):
you don't have it as much.
When I was growing up, I didn'thave any mentor showing me how
to you know be the entrepreneur.
I mean, we did it anyway, butthe it wasn't as natural as if
you had grown up through goingto Stanford or Harvard or
whatever the heck, where yourparents are themselves captains
(41:57):
of industry and getting $5million for a startup is a phone
call away.
It's like no, not for my peopleit wasn't.
So let me show you what youneed to do to keep ahead of the
tax man not get ripped off andgive you enough leeway so that
you can try one idea and thentry another idea, and try
(42:19):
another idea.
Right, that's what's lacking inthese communities and that's
what I'm trying to create spacefor.
Tim Bourguignon (42:25):
So that's what I'm doing now.
This is this is awesome.
How'd you find those peoplewith the right ideas and this
fertile earth that you can, thatyou can help cultivate?
William Adams (42:38):
Yeah, a lot of it is word of mouth.
So what I'm doing right now?
Why are we on this podcast?
Because I need to build mynetwork, I need to communicate,
I need to let people know thatthis even exists.
Tim Bourguignon (42:48):
Right.
William Adams (42:49):
So you go from being a corporate.
What Cog you go from being acorporate?
When you're in corporate, noone knows who you are, unless
you're one of those peoplethat's always on stage or you're
one of our big VPs or whatever.
I'm just a faceless, namelessguy, even though I've done
awesome stuff.
(43:09):
You walk out of thatcorporation.
You're nobody, right.
So you have to build your brandand in building the brand and
talking to people and going onstages and doing blog posts and
podcasts and this is how peoplebegin to know Right, and the
black people I know I say, hey,I'm doing this thing, tell a
friend, and eventually someoneshows up and says, hey, I'm
(43:31):
trying to do this thing.
So it's all about just creatingplaces where you can network
Right.
And then, once you getconnected sometimes people just
want 30 minutes or an hour worthof conversation to get
validation of what they're doingis interesting.
And some people are like, okay,I want to actually write this
(43:52):
code or this program.
Can you help me?
You know it's like yeah, andeither I have a word chest of
code that I can hand you tostart from or I can port you
towards stuff, but either way weget into a regular conversation
.
It's like let's meet once amonth and check in on how you're
doing.
So that's how it goes.
It's basically word of mouth atthis point.
(44:14):
Soon enough, we'll be havingevents where we'll actually
bring together people where it'slike Okay, that person has
money, that person is a customer, these people are talent.
Let's get together, talk aboutsome things and make some
connections, right?
So that's what this coming yearis all about, that.
Tim Bourguignon (44:35):
And it sounds exciting, thrilling and really
challenging at the same time.
William Adams (44:41):
Yeah, why not Right?
Tim Bourguignon (44:43):
It's like for all those years.
William Adams (44:45):
I worked my butt off for the man.
It's like why can't I do thesame for myself?
Tim Bourguignon (44:51):
Right, that is true, I mean I am older.
William Adams (44:54):
I'm now 59.
I just turned 59.
So there's an energy difference.
I don't have the same energy aswhen I was 30.
But I'm not dead.
Tim Bourguignon (45:07):
And you probably have way more contacts
and way more understanding ofthe dynamics in industry and
then to ping when, etc.
Which?
William Adams (45:18):
kind of credibility and all that as well
.
Tim Bourguignon (45:20):
That's true.
That's true.
That's the place where I haveto ask for advice.
We're already at the end of ourtime box.
We're laughing about it beforethe show, exactly Making some
cat, cat, cat signs.
I'd like to come back to you.
You said you created teams.
You've hired a lot of people.
You probably had quite a few,not junior developers, but
(45:44):
people who have, or just overthat they're starting to be,
mid-level developers.
What are the kinds of adviceyou would always tell them?
The things that they need tohear and they should be hearing
on the show as well.
William Adams (45:59):
That's a challenging one, because what I
would have said in the past isdifferent than what I would say
today.
In the past, and even the kindof people I would hire is
different.
I'll give you an example.
In the past I would hire.
So 20 years ago, let's say, Iwould be looking for those
people who are hard coreprogrammers.
(46:19):
They've compiled the Linuxkernel and they can write device
drivers and run a debugger andall this sort of stuff.
In the last five or ten yearsnot so much the languages have
changed.
First of all, people don'tlearn C and C++.
They learn Java, javascript,c-sharp, garbage collection, all
(46:42):
that sort of stuff.
The language has changed.
You're not down in the kernelanymore.
You're about UI and pullinglibraries together.
The one thing that I would saythe advice I give people that is
the same is be passionate aboutwhat you do and always try to
(47:03):
master your craft.
When you start, you're a novice.
You're learning stuff andwhatever you become a journeyman
, you're pretty good, but becomea master of whatever you do.
That means you need toconstantly learn and reinvent
and whatnot.
(47:25):
When it comes to languages, forexample, there's probably ten
different languages that I'velearned and lost over the last
30, 40 years of programming.
If I thought I could have stuckwith assembly code my entire
career nope.
Tim Bourguignon (47:41):
I would have missed out on a lot of
opportunities.
William Adams (47:45):
I mean that would have been awesome in a certain
niche, but I would have missed alot of opportunities.
Okay, as far as the skillsdevelopment is concerned, I'd
say learn new some AI, learn howto use the modern tools chat,
gpt or whatever.
Co-pilot these things.
(48:06):
Even I use these, because thefirst time I used co-pilot I was
like, oh, this is going to makeme 30% more productive and oh
wait, a minute, in another threeyears I won't be typing out a
keyboard at all.
So, dear programmer, understandthat you typing out a keyboard
(48:33):
is not going to be the way it isin a very short amount of time
and it's going to be way fasterthan you think.
So, learn how to articulate andtranslate requirements based on
conversation, because themachine is going to do all the
actual coding soon enough.
Tim Bourguignon (48:55):
This is going to be an earthquake.
It's going to be interesting.
William Adams (48:59):
Yeah, and it's important to bring in things
like philosophy and religion andall sorts of other things into
the equations, because we'recoding for humanity and we have
not had to do that in the past.
Tim Bourguignon (49:13):
That is true, william.
It's been a blast listening tothat story.
Very short story, unfortunately.
I know your story has beenrecorded in a way longer form.
Can we see it online for theMuseum of Silicon Valley?
William Adams (49:31):
Yeah, so the Computer History Museum in
Silicon Valley.
You'd have to search a bit, butyou'll find it.
It's on my website.
Tim Bourguignon (49:40):
Well, I'll link to it.
I'll find the link and link toit.
William was telling me beforethe show that you did two days,
two full days, of telling yourstory and you still wouldn't
really done with it.
William Adams (49:53):
Yeah, that just got from early childhood up
through Microsoft it wasstarting at.
Microsoft.
So yeah, there's a lot in there.
Tim Bourguignon (50:01):
So I have to do another round to get the rest
of the story, but I reallyenjoyed those 14 minutes with
you.
That was fantastic.
Where would be the best placeto continue this discussion?
Maybe tell people where theycan find you and reach out if
they are interested in WaveStudio?
William Adams (50:19):
Yeah, william-a-adamscom.
That's my website and fromthere there's a media link that
shows all the podcasts I've done.
I think the Computer HistoryMuseum stuff is listed at the
bottom of that.
You can sign up for anewsletter I put out once a
month.
It's got links to the X feedand LinkedIn and all that other
(50:45):
stuff, all the social medias.
Tim Bourguignon (50:48):
And I'll link to some of that or all of this
in the show.
William Adams (50:52):
All of that is on the website.
Tim Bourguignon (50:55):
Just scroll down All of that and more and
more.
Absolutely, then you heard it.
If you're interested in WaveStudio, reach out to William and
chat with him.
Tell him to store your ideasand he'll pick you up from there
.
William, thank you so much,it's been a blast.
William Adams (51:12):
Well, thank you for having me, it was fun.
Tim Bourguignon (51:15):
And this has been another episode of the
First Journey.
I will see each other next weekBye.
Thanks a lot for tuning in.
I hope you have enjoyed thisweek's episode.
If you like the show, pleaseshare, rate and review.
It helps more listenersdiscover those stories.
You can find the links to allthe platforms the show appears
(51:36):
on on our websitedevjourneyinfocom.
Subscribe.
Talk to you soon.
Today.
As far as the skillsdevelopment is concerned, I'd
say learn new some AI, learn howto use the modern tools chat,
gpt or whatever.
Co-pilot these things.
Even I use these because thefirst time I used co-pilot I was
like, oh, this is going to makeme 30 percent more productive
(00:29):
and oh, wait a minute, inanother three years I won't be
typing out a keyboard at all.
So, dear programmer, understandthat you typing out a keyboard
is not going to be the way it isin a very short amount of time
and it's going to be way fasterthan you think.
Tim Bourguignon (00:51):
Hello and welcome to Devilburst Journey,
the podcast bringing you themaking of stories of successful
software developers to help youon your upcoming journey.
I'm your host, tim Boulgigno.
On this episode, I receiveWilliam A Adams.
William is an award-winningdiversity and inclusion
innovator and engineeringtrailblazer and philanthropist.
(01:14):
After rolling out critical XMLcode globally in many of
Microsoft's core products, hewas named the first technical
advisor to the CTO, kevin Scott.
His career in softwareengineering spans over 30 years,
made of entrepreneurship,innovation and well actively
working toward creating moreopportunities and being an ally
(01:39):
for others.
William, I'm thrilled to haveyou on the show today.
Welcome, devjern.
William Adams (01:45):
Thank you for having me and my hello as print.
Hello world, I was being Lua.
Tim Bourguignon (01:54):
He did it.
He did it.
He said hello in a programminglanguage.
Yeah, great, loving you.
Thank you, william, but beforewe come to your story, I want to
thank the terrific listenerswho support the show.
Every month you are keeping theDevJernay lights up.
If you would like to join thisfine crew and help me spend more
time on finding phenomenalguests than editing audio tracks
(02:18):
, please go to our website,devjourneyinfo and click on the
Support Me on Patreon button.
Even the smallest contributionsare giant steps toward a
sustainable DevJernay journey.
Thank you, and now back totoday's guest.
So, william, as you know, theshow exists to help the
listeners understand what yourstory looked like and imagine
(02:41):
how to shape their own future.
So, as is customary on the show, let's go back to your
beginnings.
Where would you place the startof your DevJernay?
William Adams (02:49):
Yeah, my DevJernay is interesting and
there is a difference between myDevJernay and my Dev career.
But my Dev journey like whendid I start writing code?
It was when I was like 12 yearsold and I'm 59.
So as 40, I can't even countthat high 40 some odd years ago
(03:12):
On a Commodore PET computer andthis was right in the very
beginning of when PCs were beingcreated Commodore PET, apple
One, trs-80, atari, whatever.
I taught myself how to write infirst machine code and then
assembly language.
Then there's a basic compileror a compiler, a basic thing.
(03:35):
That's where I started.
And it started because I had anuncle who worked for the Navy
and he said hey, you want thiscomputer and, being the
precocious little kid that I,was, I was like yeah, you know,
and there are no other kids onmy block who had computers.
(03:56):
It was such a new thing, right?
So that's where my Dev journeystarted.
It was just self-taught.
My uncle gave me this computerand I just started hacking, if
you will right.
Tim Bourguignon (04:09):
There wasn't anything else to do back then
with computers.
You got a prompt and then youhad to do it yourself.
William Adams (04:15):
Yeah, everything.
And I mean this is the dayswhere my storage medium was
literally cassette tapes.
Right, you stick a cassettetape in, you type up a program,
you hit Save.
If you made a single mistake inthat whole program, you got to
do it all over again.
Oh yeah, you know.
So yeah, cassette tapes.
(04:35):
And I don't know how muchmemory that thing had.
It probably had like 8K of RAM.
I mean 8K.
That's like you can't evenspell print in 8K.
So very small but very powerful.
Tim Bourguignon (04:53):
It was indeed what attracted you, or what kept
you locked in on this machineAt 12 years old, the only kid on
your block having a computer.
William Adams (05:02):
Yeah, I mean, it was just a.
I was before that.
I was the kind of kid who hadlike erector sets.
Erector set modern day would belike Legos or whatever but
construction kits.
I had purchased a chemistry setfor myself, those electronic
kits from Radio Shack, a physicskid.
(05:24):
I was just an inventive littlekid.
This is all pretty young.
So just to feed that desire,and I also did sports, and of
course I went to school, allthat sort of stuff, and I played
with my friends outside.
And then when I came inside andit's you're inside now, this is
(05:44):
what I did, this was my hobby.
So I was a very shy child and Ijust it's like, well, computers
, that's something that's justme in the machine, and it
tickled my brain and I couldmake it do what I wanted and it
was just a match made in heaven,I suppose.
Did you imagine at?
Tim Bourguignon (06:04):
some point or early on that this could become
your kind of small commondenominator of your life story.
William Adams (06:16):
Not really.
I mean up until that point Iwas always, and I remember this
distinctly because a firemancame to our elementary school
one time, like in the third orfourth grade I think it was the
fourth grade and he's like, heput the whole fireman's outfit
on me and all this sort of stuffand he's like well, son, what
(06:37):
do you want to be when you growup?
And I'm like I want to own anelectronics company.
You know it's like oh, I'lltake that outfit off of you.
So where I lived in this placecalled Placentia, which is this
tiny little town in SouthernCalifornia, we were surrounded
(06:58):
by aerospace.
So the kids I went to schoolwith some of them, their parents
either worked for RockwellInternational or Hughes
International or one of theaerospace companies down there,
or their family were migrantworkers or other blue collar
(07:21):
workers or whatever.
So there was this mix in ourneighborhood of just regular old
people and engineering peopleand I think I just gravitated
towards the engineering stuff,even though my parents weren't
engineers.
My dad fixed typewriters so Igot exposure to machinery and
electronics and stuff.
So I always thought I was goingto do electronics.
(07:45):
We didn't have computer scienceat that time.
It wasn't a thing.
Computers were not a commonthing in life, so you couldn't
really think I'm going to have acareer in computers.
It's like there is no suchthing.
You mean you want to be a keypunch operator?
I mean that's like maybe asecretary or something that's
(08:08):
not a career for a young manlike me, so that didn't exist
until much later.
Tim Bourguignon (08:14):
So how did you pick which way to go to study or
to start?
William Adams (08:20):
So I just did that because it was fun.
And in high school a friend ofmine and I, a few more people
had computers.
Like by then we had the TRSAD,the Apple, and I got a CommRor
64, the next computer up andthere was a terminal at our
school that connected to somecentral office mainframe as a
(08:43):
mini computer For our schooldistrict.
So we started a computer cluband we would program Simple
things and basic.
This is all self-taught.
Our teachers didn't knowanything about computers.
You know, we were the ones thatlearned about the computers and
taught them.
So you know, we were justmessing around.
And then in 1982 I went off toUC Berkeley to study Electrical
(09:10):
engineering, computer science,and still, computer science was
like We'll say the word computerscience, but there's no science
to computers.
At that point, right, the drawwas the electrical engineering
and ah, you're gonna, you'regonna program those computer
things.
So again, I didn't really studycomputer.
(09:32):
We have learned some amount ofalgorithms, but yet to think in
those days is 1982, right, a Lotof the algorithms that we have
now, some of them were alreadythere, but a lot of stuff you
take for granted today didn'texist, it was being invented.
So I learned this new languagecalled Pascal.
(09:52):
There's actually a coursetaught by the guy who wrote the
compiler.
You know one of the earliest wehad this in, called p systems.
It was one of the Systems thatran stuff.
There was this other languagecalled C, you know, and you
could play with that.
You learned it on your ownbecause you're doing hardware.
And then you had to program thehardware chips.
(10:14):
So you had to learn C orassembly or whatever.
But that wasn't taught.
You just pick that up right, wewere flipping switches on PDP
10s Switches what are youtalking about?
So to input a number, there areliterally switches that
represented the bits and you hadto flip them up and down for
ones and zeros and then say load, you've looked this third one
(10:36):
load.
So we did that for a semesteror a year, a quarter, whatever
it was.
And then finally we gotterminals and we had a Vax
machine or a PDP, whatever, andwe had line printers and other
sort of stuff.
So those are just the earliestdays of like computer science.
(10:56):
It was just fumbling aboutlearning some very basic stuff.
This was the birth of thislanguage now called TCL tickle.
That was invented by a guy atBerkeley and later others.
Things came out of Berkeley butyou know, like Unix, the C
programming language, just allsorts of things were happening
at that time and I just kind offloated along with it.
(11:19):
And then Silicon Valley ingeneral was just the place,
right we're.
All sorts of things were beingbirthed.
So I didn't really in college Imean, yeah, eecs, but really
this was the start of my career.
My brother and I decided he's acouple years older than me, I
(11:42):
was the manager of the computerstore at UC Berkeley for a while
and we I was sellingMacintosh's right when they came
out the Macintosh computer, sothat was kind of the entree like
oh hey, there's this computerthing happening and I, my first
job besides the manager thingwas Teaching people how to use
(12:06):
computers.
So imagine TRS 80s and Appletwos.
And I'm teaching Visicow orWord pro or word perfect or
whatever the word, word star,whatever the word thing was.
And Fourth, programming.
I'm teaching this to officeworkers.
Right, this new computer islike well, you're gonna need to
(12:28):
learn Visicow.
Visicow, one of the early, well, the first Spreadsheet
spreadsheet yeah right.
So I was teaching and then.
So when my brother and I gotthe idea is like, let's start
our own company, becauseEveryone in Silicon Valley was
creating companies at that time,and at first we thought we were
gonna teach Computers becausethat's what I knew, right, but
(12:54):
as it turned out, there was moremoney to be made by doing
custom software development.
So we ended up I mean, wepublished a magazine of our own
for a while, but we ended updoing custom software
development For one client thatwe had in the building that we,
our office, was in, and and thenthat evolved to hey Look,
(13:16):
there's next computer.
Steve Jobs left Apple to formnext computers and we jumped on
that.
It's like let's do softwarearound the next computer.
And we were big fish in thattiny pond, had some big custom
software stuff.
We did off the shelf softwareand that, you know, that wasn't
huge commercial success, but itcarried us along for a few years
(13:40):
and then eventually, in 1998, Iwent off to Microsoft because
the jig was up with the wholenext thing and I had done a
couple of other things besidesthat, one being Telegent, which
is a no one would remember thatit was a joint between Apple and
IBM, actually and then theB-Box, which was Jean-Louis
(14:03):
Gasset, a guy who left Apple,created this company called B.
They had a machine and I workedfor them for a couple of years
and then, eventually, I went toMicrosoft to start XML.
Tim Bourguignon (14:15):
Wow, before we get there, I want to stick to
the history of Sigmund Valles.
William Adams (14:21):
Oh, okay, yeah, it's a lot of history and I
clout right through it.
There's some actual inventionsin there that are really
interesting at that time, butyeah.
Tim Bourguignon (14:32):
No worries, what I'm interested in is you
said okay.
Your brother said, hey, let's,let's create a company.
Yeah, you mentioned it as if itwas something absolutely normal
to do.
Yeah, was it in your blood toreally be an entrepreneur?
I guess Already back then.
William Adams (14:49):
Yeah, I don't know why.
I mean it probably started withmy brother, actually, when we
were back just little kids, so Iwas probably eight, nine, 10
years old, so he was probably 10, 11, 12 at most.
He had a newspaper route.
So delivering newspapers tohouses, right, and it's a pretty
(15:10):
brutal job for a little kid.
It's like they drop a pile ofnewspapers at your house.
You're responsible for takingeach paper, rolling it up,
putting the rubber band aroundit, sticking it in your delivery
bag and doing your route,delivering them right, and
sometimes I'd help him roll thepapers, I'd help him deliver
(15:31):
sometimes, sometimes I'd do thedeliveries and then you had to
go and collect the fees on amonthly basis.
You walk around, it's like, oh,you owe me $350, and you know
whatever.
I think that was really thestart because and I don't know
why he decided that wassomething he could do.
I don't know how he got into itreally, but that was the start.
(15:51):
He had this newspaper route andwe just did it.
And then we moved to adifferent neighborhood at some
point and we had to installsprinklers in our house, water
sprinklers for the lawn, right,and we did it ourselves, just me
and my brother.
So again, I'm like 10 or 11.
(16:12):
He's like 12 or 13.
And we did ours and it turnedout all right and this was a
brand new housing complex.
Tim Bourguignon (16:23):
So we went to our neighbors and said hey, can
we do yours?
William Adams (16:27):
Here's the price.
Here's a picture of the, not apicture.
We actually walked around witha manifold, which is where all
the valves are.
I was like we'll install it.
Here's what the manifold lookslike.
So we're sales we're theselittle teenagers and we're
selling lawn sprinkler servicesto our neighbors and they're
like yeah, ok, yeah, so I thinkit was just baked into us.
(16:50):
I don't know why.
It's not like my mom was anentrepreneur or my dad, but they
certainly didn't discourage usfrom doing that stuff.
My father passed away when Iwas seven, so he wasn't there
for this stuff, but mom wasthere, and I guess mom just said
well, as long as you're not introuble, that sounds good to me.
Tim Bourguignon (17:12):
So that's true.
It beats roaming around anddoing nasty stuff.
William Adams (17:18):
Yeah, I mean, we were into sports and being
little entrepreneurs and I thinkthat's what just carried
forward, because we were alwaysentrepreneurs, so there's no
reason not to think we could doit.
Tim Bourguignon (17:34):
All right, that's true and I think it
really carried forward.
But before we come to that partof the story, there's Microsoft
in between.
I hear you being your own boss,creating companies, working
with Next, working withdifferent companies and doing
probably very interesting stuff,and suddenly deciding to go to
(17:55):
this growing giant.
He said 98.
That was already a giant.
What decided, oh, what pushedyou to jump on that ship and not
be your own boss for a while?
Also, we probably had somecompanies on the side during
that time.
William Adams (18:10):
But I'll shut up and let you talk.
Oh, it was just a practicalthing.
So in 98, so I was at B and theykind of lost this battle, there
was this time, this briefmoment in time, a couple of
meetings where Apple and youkind of had to know that Apple
(18:33):
had kicked out Steve Jobs a fewyears earlier and John Scully
was in the leadership and theyweren't doing that great, so
they went Steve Jobs back.
But there was this brief timewhere it was like, is Apple
going to buy Next or are theygoing to buy B?
There was this actualconversation, people going back
(18:55):
and forth, and in the end theybought Next and I think the
calculus was essentially, weneed Steve Jobs.
The B technology was awesome,but there's no beating Steve
Jobs.
So they bought Next or Nextbought them and the rest is
history.
So I was at B at that time andso we lost essentially.
(19:19):
So our path to success wasessentially cut off.
It's like, well, if we don'tget bought by Apple, we're going
to try to make it our own.
And they just didn't.
So I left them because I had achild at that time who was like
two or three.
It's like, all right, this hasbeen great, but these are my
(19:40):
earning years.
I'm 30-something, 33.
I need to go someplace where Ican actually make a lot of money
, because between 30 and40-something, those are your
most productive years forearning money.
So I looked at a bunch of stuffin Silicon Valley and I looked
(20:02):
at Microsoft, because a friendof mine called me up and said
hey, are you looking for a job?
We're doing this XML thing upto Microsoft.
Do you want to?
Are you interested?
And I was like I hadn't reallythought about it.
But OK, so I went and did aninterview and I concluded that
it's like well, microsoft, Imean, they're being invested by
(20:23):
the Department of Justice,they're talking about splitting
them up, monopoly, all that sortof stuff, and we're about to
hit a recession and there's awhole dot-com boom is happening.
And my calculus was essentiallyOK, microsoft, either they're
going down in flames or they'regoing to rise like a phoenix.
(20:44):
Either way, it's going to be apretty good ride.
So here I go.
Tim Bourguignon (20:51):
That's a good approach to life.
I would say yeah.
William Adams (20:53):
And it turns out they were pretty resilient to
the recession.
I didn't lose my job and for 24years I didn't lose my job and
they rose like a phoenix.
They didn't go down in flamesand I had 24 productive years
there.
I recently retired in case Ididn't say that I left there
(21:17):
last year.
Tim Bourguignon (21:18):
OK, you didn't reach the 25 mark.
William Adams (21:22):
Yeah, and this was a calculus as well.
It's like should I stick aroundfor 25?
If you stick around for 25, youget your name on a plaque and a
wall in the conference center,exactly.
And I talked to a friend ofmine who's been there for like
30 years and he's like, yeah, Igot my name on the wall.
I've never seen it, I don'tcare, yeah.
Tim Bourguignon (21:39):
It's not worth waiting around for another year.
William Adams (21:42):
Maybe for the money but not really.
I was done.
It's like no, I got otherthings to do.
Tim Bourguignon (21:47):
I hear you.
So when you look back overthose 24 years, where are the
five, six things that reallystand out?
We say, hey, this is reallywhat I committed to memory and I
will remember forever.
William Adams (22:02):
The number one thing is people.
That's a easy one, because bythe end certainly I was probably
much more interested in thetransformative effects of what I
could do for people's lives,both inside the company and
across the world.
And we can get into some ofthat stuff.
That's number one is just thetransformative effect you can
(22:25):
have on people's lives.
Any bit of code that I everwrote at Microsoft was like, ah,
it's lost to history.
It's like how important was it?
Within five to 10 years it'sgone.
So now there are pieces of codethat I was the dev manager for
that are still in the systemssystemxml, systemdata,
(22:49):
systemlink, these are all things.
That is like you write newC-sharp code.
That's the first stuff thatshows up.
So it's like I'm proud of thatand that was all killer stuff.
But I think just being able tostart things with people.
Another one, a big one, is thisthing called the LEAP program,
(23:13):
which has to do with hiringwomen and minorities, at least
at the time.
Now they say very polished wordsabout what it means, but at the
time it was about we need tohire more women and
underrepresented minorities.
So I created this or co-createdthis program with an HR peer at
(23:35):
the time and that really showedthe way for, or silenced the
mantra of, oh, we can't hiremore women and minorities they
don't exist, it's like reallyhave to climb in.
It's women.
So that's not true and as faras underrepresented minorities
are concerned, we're just notlooking in the right places.
(23:57):
So let me show you how to do it.
So we cracked that code, if youwill, and now it's like seven
years on, eight years on, andthey're still doing it, and it's
a federally accreditedapprenticeship program and all
this sort of stuff.
So those are the things I'mmost proud of is just things
related to people.
I mean very personal thingslike oh, I helped this one
(24:19):
person who was suffering with anunbearable husband but she was
brilliant, a brilliant scientistand an awesome coder and just
giving her encouragement so thatshe could go yeah.
I'm actually worthwhile and Ican do this thing and I'm really
good at it.
Tim Bourguignon (24:38):
It's like yes you are, it's like these
personal stories.
Absolutely.
William Adams (24:44):
Code wise.
It's just been everything.
It's like okay, I've worked onXML.
Plenty of people cringe and runfrom that.
I was like, ah, I embrace it.
If you look at your Worddocuments today, or PowerPoint
or Excel, they're actually justXML in a zip file.
So thank you, yeah.
Tim Bourguignon (25:10):
Yeah, it's the backbone of the internet as well
and there's kind of a similar.
William Adams (25:15):
There was one of those things like Jason came
along and there was like, oh,this is how much better than XML
.
It's like, yeah, and you'retrying to make Jason look like
XML now.
So and of course, people beforeus before we did XML.
There's this standard calledASN.1.
And those people look at XMLand say you're just trying to
create ASN.1.
(25:35):
It's a binary format of datarepresentation that existed way
before that.
Tim Bourguignon (25:42):
It's either standing on the shoulders of
giants or get off my loan.
It's either one.
William Adams (25:49):
Yeah, so you know me and Copa Pennants for
creating the abomination that isXML.
But you're welcome, you'rewelcome, you're welcome.
Tim Bourguignon (25:59):
No, no.
So yeah, that is real true.
When you look back, you reallyforget about all the
technicalities, the project, thehardship and everything.
You just see faces.
You see faces of the people whoreally matter, the people who
you matter to during their lifeand you're able to do something
at one point that reallyunlocked something, and this is
what sticks.
This is real.
William Adams (26:19):
And let me just mention a couple more, because
maybe this will be food forfodder in a little bit, Please,
please.
So I did the LEAP program.
Before I did that, I actuallylived in India for three years
to help create what we call theengineering excellence.
So I taught all of theengineers, all the college, all
the college hire engineers forfive weeks before they went into
(26:40):
their dev teams for two and ahalf years, so 2006 to 2009,.
I helped essentially build theIndia Development Center and
then later in the last sevenyears not the last five years I
did a similar thing not quitethe same, but a similar thing to
(27:02):
help us create dev centers inKenya and Nigeria, where we
didn't have them before.
Those are really transformativebecause it's like India was
already existed, but it wasgrowing fast.
Kenya and Nigeria didn't existat all, so it was bootstrapping
and I helped that process ofbootstrapping those development
(27:23):
centers.
Hugely transformative when yousay I'm going to bring these
high paying jobs to you insteadof removing your brains from
your country and bringing themto the US.
So, we were very explicit likethis is not a brain drain
strategy, this is an enhancementstrategy.
(27:43):
We want the jobs to stay herebecause it creates a whole
ecosystem of new people and newopportunities.
As opposed to oh, you need yourbest and brightest to help
yourselves, Well, let's juststeal them from you.
So I'm pretty proud of thatwork as well.
Tim Bourguignon (28:07):
Is this something that Microsoft does a
lot Really going into differentcountries and treating their dev
centers there instead ofbringing them to US?
William Adams (28:17):
No, and I would say I'm just trying to think
through rapidly how our variousdevelopment centers have been
created.
Africa was the firstintentional one like that.
We have other smallerdevelopment centers that come up
(28:39):
and, like Mexico's, is startingto get a little something and
whatever.
But when you look at placeslike India, for example, well,
india already had some stuff andwe had plenty of Indian
engineers.
They went home and there was anintention and it's like I'm
here.
Okay, everyone's going to starthiring China.
(29:00):
There was a very specific lab.
It started with Microsoftresearch, so we were hiring a
specific person, hiring theirlab and then building up from
there.
But you already had anecosystem there, right, boston,
boston and the United States.
We buy a company.
That company has 100 employees.
(29:20):
You build from that.
Kenya, nigeria, is completelydifferent.
We didn't have anything.
So we just very intentionallysaid we want to create here
because of these following fiveor six reasons, one being just
talent is all over the place andthey're very young, very smart
just no opportunities.
(29:41):
And yeah, we had some Africanengineers, but they were all in
the US, so we didn't have anecosystem there at all and we
didn't buy a company or anythinglike that.
We just said I personally hiredfour or five people in Kenya
and said you are now the nucleusof what we're going to build in
Kenya right.
And now I'm going to get ourother teams here.
(30:02):
There was a guy from Windowswho came in as the big dog and
said all right, all right, wegot this, now we're going to
bring everybody.
And then he brought in Officeand Visual Studio and now the
whole company's there.
Right, but it was a very intent.
This was not the way Microsofttypically does it.
(30:22):
Usually we go and buy a companyor something and that's why we
end up somewhere, but this wasvery explicitly like no, we're
going to Kenya and Nigeriabecause we need to be there.
Tim Bourguignon (30:33):
Right, this is awesome.
It was really awesome.
William Adams (30:36):
It was quite different.
Tim Bourguignon (30:39):
Indeed, indeed, it's really different from what
I lived.
At some point I was interestedin working for Microsoft and I
looked around in Germany and inEurope and there's very little
development in Europe.
It's really sales here and thewhole marketing is here and
everything.
There's some advocacy as well,but that's it.
William Adams (30:55):
And I thought everything was in the US.
No, I mean, there's places likeRomania.
There's an app posted inRomania and it was again.
We bought some company andfound out, wow, there's a whole
bunch of programmers here.
But yeah, it is strange thatEurope is like we went to do AI
in Cambridge because there's abunch of AI in Cambridge.
(31:16):
So you know, that's what Ithink.
Yeah, we heard about that.
Tim Bourguignon (31:22):
There was something in the news a few
years ago.
How did you grow into beingable to do this?
I mean, we started your storyat Microsoft, writing XML and
really being hands-on programmer, I would say, although it might
not be your exact title by then, but let's take it.
William Adams (31:43):
Well, when I first joined the company in 98,
I was a programmer and one ofthe first things I worked on was
this thing called XSLT, whichis just a thing related to XML.
But very soon because you thinkbefore that I was the VP of
engineering and my own companyof four people.
But very soon it turns out thatI was a good leader.
(32:07):
So I pretty quickly turned intothe dev manager for the group
that I was in and spent a lot ofyears building, hiring, shaping
, transforming productdevelopment, less coding, more
of the just being a goodengineering manager.
(32:28):
I spent a lot of years doingthat until I went off to India
and then it was doing it at alarge scale, the stepping stone.
Some of it is just choice andsome of it is just opportunity.
So I chose to.
When we did that first XML team,there was a lot of stress and
(32:51):
our leader left and no onewanted to follow him because he
was such a tyrant.
I saw the group is like, oh,this is going to fall apart.
I just stepped up and said,well, okay, I'm one of the
leaders, I know how to lead, soI'm one of the leaders and
here's two or three other people.
We are the management leaders.
(33:11):
That went on for a couple ofyears and I built a pretty good
dev team that took care of lotsof different things, not just
XML.
Tim Bourguignon (33:21):
That's how.
William Adams (33:22):
I got into the engineering management if you
will, and that shifts yourresponsibilities, because now
you're worried about people morethan code.
As a manager, I did it's like.
Well, you hire really smartpeople.
Why are you still trying towrite code you don't need to.
They do.
Tim Bourguignon (33:44):
Did you look back while doing this transition
, saying, what am I doing?
William Adams (33:49):
Why don't I just stick around in front of my
keyboard and just just no, itwas an interesting time because
I was, as a natural person, veryshy child.
I grew out of the shyness alittle bit, but still very much
an introvert, and I forcedmyself to be not more of an
(34:13):
extrovert but to be moreinteractive.
Right, I was on a journey.
I'm 40-something, I'm comingout of my personal shell.
First time I'm interacting withOmega Corporation.
There's a lot to learnpersonally in that space.
At that time I didn't.
(34:35):
By the time I got to India, whenI was in India, I actually
ended up writing a lot of code,because the way I would teach
the students is I'd say okay,look, you need to learn this
language.
C-sharp here's a product.
It's 80, 90 percent done.
You've got to write the rest ofthe code.
Here's the featured list ofthings you should do.
(34:56):
I wrote and this was thebeginning of C-sharp I wrote a
ton of code related to usingOpenGL, which is a 3D graphics
programming thing, not DirectX.
I wrote a whole shim layer forusing C-sharp with OpenGL.
Then we did programs usingOpenGL and the GPU and all that
(35:18):
sort of stuff.
I did this multi-user networkcommunications framework, all
the stuff you do today with well, what we're doing right now
recording each other across theplanet.
So this is in the early 2000s,so 2007, 2008.
(35:41):
So I wrote a lot of code then.
I was just a one-man codingmachine.
My stuff is actually on GitHubfrom back then.
I eventually uploaded it.
But, yeah, I got my coding itchsatisfied in that way, Because
by then I had been a manager forquite a few years and I was
(36:04):
like, I think I can code.
Tim Bourguignon (36:10):
So I did.
William Adams (36:10):
So I went back to coding, but at the same time I
pulled along this trainingpeople how to do their jobs
thing.
I did that again when I leftMicrosoft and I code today
because it's just a hobby.
It's like exercise.
You got to do 50 push-ups, yougot to write 200 lines of code,
(36:31):
right.
Tim Bourguignon (36:33):
Yeah, amen to that.
What's convinced you to leaveMicrosoft and say now is the
time I need to do something else?
William Adams (36:45):
So 24 years and being there that long.
On occasion I would give talksto various people, groups,
either through LEAP or otheravenues, where people would ask
me either because it's well,you've been here 20 years, why
have you been here so long?
What would make you leave?
Blah, blah, blah.
And I've tell people since thebeginning of the time I was
(37:07):
there in 1998, every two yearswhen I went in 98, I said I'll
be here for two years and I'llsee what's next, right?
So every two years and I didthis religiously every two years
I would look up and go.
Is this still the best thingfor me to be doing?
Does this satisfy my life?
Is it the best deal?
Is it?
(37:28):
I didn't want to go to sleepand then wake up 30 years later
and go wow, well, that was acareer that was fun.
What did I do?
Nothing.
So every two years, I askmyself the question is this the
best use of my time?
Is this the best bang for thebuck?
Is this the most impactfulthing I could be doing?
(37:48):
Right?
And it's not just about codefor Microsoft, it's like I'm
more than just a Microsoft coder.
I'm William A Adams right, whatis my life Right?
So every two years so in thelast two years, 22 to 24, I
asked that question and I waslike huh, I'm not sure.
(38:11):
And I also noticed that I wasstarting to repeat things.
Right, it's like wait a minuteteaching young programmers how
to program and how to run a team.
I did that 20 years ago and I'mdoing it again.
And I'm not wanting to climbthe corporate ladder.
I don't want to become a CVPbecause that's a bridge too far.
(38:33):
It's like I don't want to bethat invested in this thing.
So I'm going to start repeating.
I think I'm done and at thesame time, there's a bigger
mission.
So I did the leap thing andthat enabled lots of people and
continues to enable people.
Why don't I leverage and buildoff of that and do it for the
broader world?
(38:54):
I did the Africa thing, it'slike, well, why can't I do that
for more people?
Now it's different when youdon't work for mega corporation,
but there's still plenty ofvalue I can bring to the world
and you can't do it necessarilyin the confines of Microsoft.
Now I can work with them, but atthe end of the day, they got to
make money for them.
So it's like, hey, why don't wedo this program that does the
(39:17):
blah, blah, blah?
It's like that's not really inline with Azure and artificial
intelligence.
So you run into more and morebarriers and, even though
they'll let you keep your joband they'll keep paying me, they
didn't want me to leave.
It's like why are you leaving?
Why are you leaving?
But it's like because what Iwant to do now is not in line
(39:40):
with where you guys need to go,Right, and that's why I left.
It's like, okay, and it took awhile for me to actually, I
would say it took me the lastyear to separate, because it's
like I've been doing somethingfor 24 years, Right, you don't
just cut it off cold turkey.
So it took me a while to get toa point where I was like,
(40:01):
finally, it's time for me to goRight.
And then I've spent the lastyear really working hard on my
own personal mission, codinglike crazy.
You know.
It's like who am I reallywithout the trappings of the
mega corporation.
Do I still got it and doesanyone care?
Right?
Tim Bourguignon (40:23):
Do you want to tell us about it?
William Adams (40:25):
Oh, about what I'm doing now.
Tim Bourguignon (40:26):
Absolutely yeah .
William Adams (40:27):
Oh yeah.
So what I'm doing now is, well,william A Adams, but the
umbrella of things I'm doing iscalled Wave Studio and it's
essentially what we call aventure studio, which is
slightly different than a VC.
A VC is a fund that has money.
They throw to 100 differentventures and they see what
(40:50):
sticks and they're looking for100 x improvement or payout and
then they move on to the next100.
Right, a venture studio is morelike we're investing in people,
so there might be 10individuals.
It's like well, I want to investin you because you have some
good idea, let's try that.
(41:10):
That one didn't work out, let'sdo the next one.
But while we're, while we'vegot you in the studio, let's
teach you how to dance and singand present you know.
Let's teach you the skillsnecessary to be that
entrepreneur, because otherwisewhere are you going to learn
that?
And my focus is on women andminorities, because that's where
(41:35):
you don't have it as much.
When I was growing up, I didn'thave any mentor showing me how
to you know be the entrepreneur.
I mean, we did it anyway, butthe it wasn't as natural as if
you had grown up through goingto Stanford or Harvard or
whatever the heck, where yourparents are themselves captains
(41:57):
of industry and getting $5million for a startup is a phone
call away.
It's like no, not for my peopleit wasn't.
So let me show you what youneed to do to keep ahead of the
tax man not get ripped off andgive you enough leeway so that
you can try one idea and thentry another idea, and try
(42:19):
another idea.
Right, that's what's lacking inthese communities and that's
what I'm trying to create spacefor.
Tim Bourguignon (42:25):
So that's what I'm doing now.
This is this is awesome.
How'd you find those peoplewith the right ideas and this
fertile earth that you can, thatyou can help cultivate?
William Adams (42:38):
Yeah, a lot of it is word of mouth.
So what I'm doing right now?
Why are we on this podcast?
Because I need to build mynetwork, I need to communicate,
I need to let people know thatthis even exists.
Tim Bourguignon (42:48):
Right.
William Adams (42:49):
So you go from being a corporate.
What Cog you go from being acorporate?
When you're in corporate, noone knows who you are, unless
you're one of those peoplethat's always on stage or you're
one of our big VPs or whatever.
I'm just a faceless, namelessguy, even though I've done
awesome stuff.
(43:09):
You walk out of thatcorporation.
You're nobody, right.
So you have to build your brandand in building the brand and
talking to people and going onstages and doing blog posts and
podcasts and this is how peoplebegin to know Right, and the
black people I know I say, hey,I'm doing this thing, tell a
friend, and eventually someoneshows up and says, hey, I'm
(43:31):
trying to do this thing.
So it's all about just creatingplaces where you can network
Right.
And then, once you getconnected sometimes people just
want 30 minutes or an hour worthof conversation to get
validation of what they're doingis interesting.
And some people are like, okay,I want to actually write this
(43:52):
code or this program.
Can you help me?
You know it's like yeah, andeither I have a word chest of
code that I can hand you tostart from or I can port you
towards stuff, but either way weget into a regular conversation
.
It's like let's meet once amonth and check in on how you're
doing.
So that's how it goes.
It's basically word of mouth atthis point.
(44:14):
Soon enough, we'll be havingevents where we'll actually
bring together people where it'slike Okay, that person has
money, that person is a customer, these people are talent.
Let's get together, talk aboutsome things and make some
connections, right?
So that's what this coming yearis all about, that.
Tim Bourguignon (44:35):
And it sounds exciting, thrilling and really
challenging at the same time.
William Adams (44:41):
Yeah, why not Right?
Tim Bourguignon (44:43):
It's like for all those years.
William Adams (44:45):
I worked my butt off for the man.
It's like why can't I do thesame for myself?
Tim Bourguignon (44:51):
Right, that is true, I mean I am older.
William Adams (44:54):
I'm now 59.
I just turned 59.
So there's an energy difference.
I don't have the same energy aswhen I was 30.
But I'm not dead.
Tim Bourguignon (45:07):
And you probably have way more contacts
and way more understanding ofthe dynamics in industry and
then to ping when, etc.
Which?
William Adams (45:18):
kind of credibility and all that as well
.
Tim Bourguignon (45:20):
That's true.
That's true.
That's the place where I haveto ask for advice.
We're already at the end of ourtime box.
We're laughing about it beforethe show, exactly Making some
cat, cat, cat signs.
I'd like to come back to you.
You said you created teams.
You've hired a lot of people.
You probably had quite a few,not junior developers, but
(45:44):
people who have, or just overthat they're starting to be,
mid-level developers.
What are the kinds of adviceyou would always tell them?
The things that they need tohear and they should be hearing
on the show as well.
William Adams (45:59):
That's a challenging one, because what I
would have said in the past isdifferent than what I would say
today.
In the past, and even the kindof people I would hire is
different.
I'll give you an example.
In the past I would hire.
So 20 years ago, let's say, Iwould be looking for those
people who are hard coreprogrammers.
(46:19):
They've compiled the Linuxkernel and they can write device
drivers and run a debugger andall this sort of stuff.
In the last five or ten yearsnot so much the languages have
changed.
First of all, people don'tlearn C and C++.
They learn Java, javascript,c-sharp, garbage collection, all
(46:42):
that sort of stuff.
The language has changed.
You're not down in the kernelanymore.
You're about UI and pullinglibraries together.
The one thing that I would saythe advice I give people that is
the same is be passionate aboutwhat you do and always try to
(47:03):
master your craft.
When you start, you're a novice.
You're learning stuff andwhatever you become a journeyman
, you're pretty good, but becomea master of whatever you do.
That means you need toconstantly learn and reinvent
and whatnot.
(47:25):
When it comes to languages, forexample, there's probably ten
different languages that I'velearned and lost over the last
30, 40 years of programming.
If I thought I could have stuckwith assembly code my entire
career nope.
Tim Bourguignon (47:41):
I would have missed out on a lot of
opportunities.
William Adams (47:45):
I mean that would have been awesome in a certain
niche, but I would have missed alot of opportunities.
Okay, as far as the skillsdevelopment is concerned, I'd
say learn new some AI, learn howto use the modern tools chat,
gpt or whatever.
Co-pilot these things.
(48:06):
Even I use these, because thefirst time I used co-pilot I was
like, oh, this is going to makeme 30% more productive and oh
wait, a minute, in another threeyears I won't be typing out a
keyboard at all.
So, dear programmer, understandthat you typing out a keyboard
(48:33):
is not going to be the way it isin a very short amount of time
and it's going to be way fasterthan you think.
So, learn how to articulate andtranslate requirements based on
conversation, because themachine is going to do all the
actual coding soon enough.
Tim Bourguignon (48:55):
This is going to be an earthquake.
It's going to be interesting.
William Adams (48:59):
Yeah, and it's important to bring in things
like philosophy and religion andall sorts of other things into
the equations, because we'recoding for humanity and we have
not had to do that in the past.
Tim Bourguignon (49:13):
That is true, william.
It's been a blast listening tothat story.
Very short story, unfortunately.
I know your story has beenrecorded in a way longer form.
Can we see it online for theMuseum of Silicon Valley?
William Adams (49:31):
Yeah, so the Computer History Museum in
Silicon Valley.
You'd have to search a bit, butyou'll find it.
It's on my website.
Tim Bourguignon (49:40):
Well, I'll link to it.
I'll find the link and link toit.
William was telling me beforethe show that you did two days,
two full days, of telling yourstory and you still wouldn't
really done with it.
William Adams (49:53):
Yeah, that just got from early childhood up
through Microsoft it wasstarting at.
Microsoft.
So yeah, there's a lot in there.
Tim Bourguignon (50:01):
So I have to do another round to get the rest
of the story, but I reallyenjoyed those 14 minutes with
you.
That was fantastic.
Where would be the best placeto continue this discussion?
Maybe tell people where theycan find you and reach out if
they are interested in WaveStudio?
William Adams (50:19):
Yeah, william-a-adamscom.
That's my website and fromthere there's a media link that
shows all the podcasts I've done.
I think the Computer HistoryMuseum stuff is listed at the
bottom of that.
You can sign up for anewsletter I put out once a
month.
It's got links to the X feedand LinkedIn and all that other
(50:45):
stuff, all the social medias.
Tim Bourguignon (50:48):
And I'll link to some of that or all of this
in the show.
William Adams (50:52):
All of that is on the website.
Tim Bourguignon (50:55):
Just scroll down All of that and more and
more.
Absolutely, then you heard it.
If you're interested in WaveStudio, reach out to William and
chat with him.
Tell him to store your ideasand he'll pick you up from there
.
William, thank you so much,it's been a blast.
William Adams (51:12):
Well, thank you for having me, it was fun.
Tim Bourguignon (51:15):
And this has been another episode of the
First Journey.
I will see each other next weekBye.
Thanks a lot for tuning in.
I hope you have enjoyed thisweek's episode.
If you like the show, pleaseshare, rate and review.
It helps more listenersdiscover those stories.
You can find the links to allthe platforms the show appears
(51:36):
on on our websitedevjourneyinfocom.
Subscribe.
Talk to you soon.
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