Exploits in Management*

1. Exploits in Management* Robert Barnes General Manger, Microsoft.Com Core Microsoft *No lab animals were harmed in the making of this story – some were used…

2. Chapters • Background • Path to Management • Management Challenges

3. Background • Rubber bands… • Be Prepared… • To Be or Not to Be… • Outliers…

4. My Day Job • Microsoft.com • Staffing • 150 FTE, 300 vendor • Redmond, Beijing, Hyderabad • What we build • www.microsoft.com • www.microsoft.com/downloads • Content Publishing and analytics • Redemption • Infrastructure and Application Footprint • 3Internet data centers and 5 CDN partnerships • 2+ gb/sec website; 100-300+ gb/sec downloads • 1.3 – 1.7 billion hits/day from 57+ million unique IPs • 128 Web Servers • 10 SQL Servers • Reach: #11 US, #8 Worldwide domain with 303M UU/month** • Availability: MSCOM Platform at 99.93% availability as measured by Keynote ** Data Source: WebTrends FY10Q2

5. In the Beginning • In the early 1980s, relational databases were new • Most applications used Flat files, ISAM files, or Navigational Databases (Codasysl) • Relational was what people wanted…. • What did they need? • The Ice Box • Getting paid to play…. • Key lessons: • Scientific method critical to results • Feedback systems critical – you get what you measure • Outsiders perspective - Ignorance can be helpful

6. Scale-out vs. Scale-up • The power of parallelism • The challenge of parallelism • Scale-up begins to look like scale-out as you add processors • Scale-out with commodity hardware is economically compelling • Every large successful web site uses scale-out – it is practical, but hard • Operations complexity is the key barrier to scale-out • Simple demo

7. Admin expert Network expert Performance expert OS expert DB expert DebitCredit History 1987: 256 tps Benchmark • 14 M$ computer (Tandem) • A dozen people • False floor, 2 rooms of machines Hardware experts A 32 node processor array Auditor Simulate 25,600 clients Manager A 40 GB disk array (80 drives)

8. IBM 4391 Simulated network of 800 clients 2m$ computer Staff of 6 to do benchmark 2 x 3725 network controllers Refrigerator-sized CPU 16 GB disk farm 4 x 8 x .5GB DebitCredit History1988: DB2 / CICS Mainframe 65 tps

9. Hardware expert OS expert Net expert DB expert App expert DebitCredit History1997: 10 years later 1 Person and 1 box = 1400 tps • 1 Breadbox ~ 5x 1987 machine room • 23 GB is hand-held • One person does all the work • Cost/tps is 20,000x less1 micro dollar per transaction 4x200 Mhz cpu 1/2 GB DRAM 12 x 4GB disk 3 x7 x 4GB disk arrays

10. DebitCredit • Database is a hypothetical Bank • 1.6 Billion Accounts • 160,000 tellers, • 16,000 branches, • 30 day history file • Transaction is • Debit or Credit an account • (and update teller, branch and history) • 15% of transactions are distributed • non-local to teller/branch so involve multiple nodes

11. 8 Seconds of Terror

12. Going Over to the Dark Side • After years of IC and technical manager roles, I decided to find out what I had been doing wrong • Learning the language of business was valuable • Leadership and organizational change were my favorite courses • Playing in the desert

13. Challenge: Driving Cross-Company Initiatives • Common Engineering Criteria • Standardizing capabilities across server products • Driving new capabilities across server products • Lessons Learned • Driving organizational change across divisions requires top-down and bottoms-up efforts • Participation contributes towards support • Transparency in the process • Decision owner(s) and process must be clear • Exceptions process must be published and consistent

14. Challenge: New Org Manager, then Disaster Strikes • Took on new role in December, 2007 • Release review in November as observer • I told them they my have performance problems…. • I told them they needed to improve engineering • Jan. 8, 2008, a blogger post criticizes key executives in the company about Partner • It turns out, May 2007 and Nov. 2007 releases had been flawed • I had to fix the problem , learn the organization, and lead the organization at the same time

15. New Manager Disaster • Quickly brought communication under control • Established “follow-the-sun” monitoring and management • Drove hard changes in the organization because we had to • People wanted to be led • People accepted change • People saw the value in change

16. Challenge: Re-org • Microsoft.Com reorganized into IT from product groups in March, 2009 • May, 2010: I become leader • Due to org-depth and SPOC, leadership changes required • Friction between disciplines • IT resentment • Need for improved engineering practices • Managing performance to a curve • “Engineering Culture” – a failed attempt

17. Engineering Culture • Attempted to solve friction issue by asking Dev and Test disciplines to become “fungible” • In new team (Beijing), part of org structure • In existing, not part of structure • People did not want to be led • People did not accept change • People did not see the value in change • Poll results tanked

18. The Future of Management • Why to people become managers? • Seat at the table • Career growth • Wanting to be in charge • Someone has to do it • Feedback systems are critical • Management innovation can only happen when integrated with feedback systems and aligned with organization culture – context matters