Building Successful Careers

When you stop learning, you start dying. Pat Zimmerman

It has been at least seven years since I last met Wayne in person. Seven years of time washed away many sandy grinds between us and left only sparkling gold. I could not help to thank Wayne for one of my most important career paradigm shifts. Without his advice, I could not grow from a first line manager to a director. Wayne looked at me with his signature smile, “Let me tell you my version of the story .” My heart was racing; did I remember our meeting total differently? Wayne was an architect at a large software company 20 years ago. He once talked to a Sr. VP and his mentor at this large company. His mentor said: “Wayne, there are three bodies of knowledge for each person: 1. The knowledge you are aware of, and you know it very well and apply it in your life daily 2. The knowledge that you are aware of, but you don’t know it well because you have no interest, desire or capability to acquire it 3. The knowledge that you are not aware of, you never knew such knowledge existed. You wi...

We either leisurely or are forced to make decisions or choices each day. Each decision or choice points to a different path, defines our future and influences people around us, subtlety or profoundly. Using programming language, life presents us with sets after sets of “if else" statements. We could very well come from the same place in our lives (i.e. classmates from the same school). Each outcome of the “if else” sets us apart. Over a long period of time , we become vastly different people. Therefore, some of us become restless when it is time to make decisions, others are afraid of the consequences of their choices. Recently, I had an enlightening conversation with Dan Pritchett, EBay Fellow and CTO of Rearden Commerce. He was the first person ever who clearly separated decisions and choices for me. He said, “Choices are made based on pure facts, based on adequate supportive information; it is a purely analytical result. Decisions are made based on partial facts, partia...

My long lost friend May called me out of the blue yesterday. Three minutes into the conversation, we talked about life. Life is made up of events. Although individual events seem accidental, woven together they form relationships and experiences which impact how you feel about yourself. In that sense, nothing is accidental. Everything intertwines impacting your future life, ultimately creating your present and future life experiences. May joked that there are two types of people in the world. One type creates stories and the other listens to stories. Story creators are full of surprises and new initiatives, their life experience is exciting. Listeners get excited just observing them, wanting to be included in these stories. At lunch time, I was five minutes early and while waiting for my friend I noticed a table with four ladies talking and laughing. What a happy table! I could not help notice that one lady was radiant with happiness and excitement. That made her so beautiful and...

Many people would say I am a process junky because of my extensive experience at IBM DB2, and many years of practicing sophisticated software development processes to build large scale mission critical enterprise software. The perception from people who don’t know me well is their perfect reality. Indeed, Elizabeth is a process junky on paper from afar. People who know me well see a different Elizabeth, who has a passion for innovation. Research, innovation and creativity inspire me, and fuel me through many “boring” days and activities. Without innovation, one would never paint the most moving scenes and objects; one could never build killer apps. Without innovation, the iPhone would never reach our palms. Well, can we build an iPhone without any process? Despite the many birth defects the iPhone IV born with, it went through very strict processes to achieve such consistency, friendly user interface and it is a piece of art. When I go to an empty parking lot, I can zigzag whateve...

The first time I really heard the word of the “Collaboration” was in 1998 when I still worked at IBM. One of the Sr. VPs spoke to us about the difference between the 20th and 21st centuries. He referred to the 20th century as the century of super heroes, who either destroyed or saved the world, companies and communities. Due to the vast amount of information and accelerated rate of information addition and exchanging, it would be impossible for one person to digest the vast amount of information and provide penetrating messages beyond the noise of the ever growing information universe. Then the 21st century became the century of team collaboration, that groups of super heroes would work together, utilize their expertise and strength, process information that they could best understand, providing their expert strategy and methodology, flawlessly execute the team’s plan and reach the ultimate goal. Since then, collaboration became popular as well as frequently abused, and it is risi...

Play Like a Man, Win Like a Woman: What Men Know About Success that Women Need to Learn By Gail Evans If you want to learn how to win like a woman, this is not the right book. It is about how to play like a man. "win like a woman" is a pink scarf to attract female readers. a Nice small book to read, a lot of useful tips. Enjoy. Elizabeth Xu