25 years at Microsoft: Lessons learnt.

As I was flying to Riviera Maya, Mexico, for a one-week Microsoft trip I was awarded with (I was fortunate enough to be the recipient of the Gold Club Circle of Excellence at the end of our FY23), I took the time to reflect on my 25-year anniversary at Microsoft, which happened on Sept 18, 2023.

My career in tech started when I had a chance to touch a ZX 81 from Sinclair in Middle School, in the early 80s.? I immediately became attracted to that machine, and a couple of years later, I became the proud owner of an Oric Atmos 48K and started to write a lot of code in Basic and Assembly, saving all that code on tapes!? In parallel, I also wrote a lot of code for my calculator that I had back then: Casio FX-702P .

When I started my Chemical Engineering studies in Toulouse, I literally spent all my studies in the School Data Center writing Fortran 77 code on Unix machines.? In addition, I was the head of the “Computer Club” and was responsible for 5 Apple IIc machines for the students to either work or play (Tetris was super-hot back then!).? I was myself writing code in Turbo Pascal to develop applications for the MacIntosh operating system.?

As the end of my engineering cycle was coming to an end, I was not sure what I wanted to do next: Continue my studies or find a job. I decided to apply for a DEA , "Dipl?me d’Etudes Approfondies" (which is a master's degree postgraduate) for a Chemical Engineering Simulator software that was developed by my engineering school and called Prosim . My application was denied because the professor who interviewed me back then thought that I was probably not going to be a good developer.? Needless to say that, that was the best thing that could have happened to me!? I was just trying to push the can down the road to not have to look for a job.

Once I graduated from my Chemical Engineering School in 1993, I was hired by a small IT boutique shop in Toulouse, France called FAST Maintenance, where I had the chance to meet my now wife Christele Zecchin sp. Belaud .? During that period, my CEO, Michel Brisebois (I will be forever grateful for him taking a chance on me) wanted to open a support center for Microsoft products (first line of support before the actual official Microsoft support teams kicked in).? That’s when I started to get exposed to Microsoft technologies.? The only thing I knew about Microsoft when I started there was Word and Excel on a MacIntosh machine I used in my Engineering school. I asked one of my colleagues (who then became a lifelong friend) Christophe Dehon if he had any idea on how to write code for the Windows Operating System.? He pointed me to Visual Basic 1.0, and that is when I fell in love with Microsoft Technologies.? I developed strong expertise in all flavors of Visual Basic, up to v6.0, COM /DCOM and started to develop my data expertise on SQL Server 4.2 and beyond.? That’s during that time that I wrote the very first version of my code generator that I later named OlyMars (coming from my favorite soccer team: OLYmpique de MARSeille ).? Back then, I also developed a full inventory application running on PSION hardware that was used by all of our technicians in charge of the computers maintenance at Airbus Industries .? It really was a fun ride back then!

After 5 great years with that company, I decided that I needed to change air, mainly because, regardless of what I was doing, I was always considered the newbie in town. I knew I had to take a risk and try something else if I wanted to progress further.

That summer of 1998, France became the FIFA world champion for the very first time of its history, and it was during that competition that I received a call from Microsoft France asking me if I was interested in joining them.? My friend Laurent Bonnet (thank you!) was the one circulating my resume internally.? I went through a series of interviews and a psychological evaluation (this one was done by a third-party company).? The results of that evaluation came back to my then hiring manager, Frédéric Aatz , and it was literally saying something like “Pascal might be a bit tough to manage and we would recommend not hiring him”!? Well, I would be forever grateful for Fred for ignoring that warning and giving me a chance.? From there I became the first developer evangelist of Microsoft France, showcasing on stage our development platform (Win32 , COM, DCOM and then .NET and of course Visual Studio ).? It was a blast for 11 years as I was exposed to so many different audiences: Developers, Journalists and Academic.? That is when I discovered a passion for teaching and became an adjunct professor, on my vacation time, at Centrale Paris , Universite Pierre and Marie Curie , Universite de Corte and IUT de Toulouse to name a few places.

During my time in that role, I was fortunate to have absolutely fantastic leaders who helped me grow: Jean-Yves Grisi , Rene Philippe Mantrand , Jean-Christophe DUPUY , Olivier Ribet , Olivier Ezratty , Marc Gardette , Daniel Cohen-Zardi , Marc Jalabert , Eric Boustouller , Christophe Aulnette , Eric Mittelette and Alain Crozier .? Not all years were good years for me, but I learnt so much with them and they made me the leader I am today.

Then, a new GM was hired from outside and decided that he would fire me because I spent too many years in my then position.? As you can imagine, I went through a lot of stress back then. This traumatic event forced me to find a new job quickly and I applied for a Technical Solution Professional (TSP) position (all the sudden going from a non-quota job to a quota based one which was even more stressful).? At that point, I got the job pretty quickly, thanks to a huge internal campaign to save me that I had no idea about (more on this later down in my post). I'm grateful for Etienne Jacques and so many others who stood up for me at that moment.? A couple of months later, that GM was fired before he could do any more damage.

Once in the new job, this is where I started to realize that I was missing a big part of knowledge to do my job effectively: I really had no clue how a company worked.? That is when, after a year and a half of preparation, I decided to embark on an Executive MBA journey at ESSEC, Paris (in part-time for 18 months).? I will be forever grateful for my leader Christian Chevalier (who is a lifelong friend) who allowed me to go through that journey and protected me for 18 months against unwanted internal solicitations so I could focus and study without a feeling of guilt.? Big thanks also to my then manager Jean-Philippe Gournail for his support.

Once my Executive MBA was completed, my colleague (and now lifelong friend) Ariel Aubry contacted me to offer me my very first leadership position in his team.? I was supposed to lead a team of architects in our consulting branch called Microsoft Consulting Services (MCS).? Thus far, I always had been on the software side of the company, and I hesitated a lot before taking this role as I was not sure that I would be successful managing consultancy type of services versus purely software services.? At some point, I decided to take the risk and went for it. I learnt a lot about leadership under Ariel Aubry , Carlo Purassanta and Christian Chevalier who also moved from the previous division to MCS.

After a couple of years in that position, we made the decision as a family to challenge ourselves completely and try a new life in the big apple, NYC!? After 9 interviews and 2 trips to NYC, I got the chance to get hired in the Microsoft New York Metro District.? Thanks to Adam Rodell , Luke Thomas , Robert Petrocchi , Jim Conmy and Fari Breguet for giving me a chance.? The first years in the US were full of discovery:? New people (I had to rebuild my entire network as I literally knew nobody), new ways of communicating, new ways of leading people, new ways of managing the business.? After the first year, that’s when Ed Fandrey was appointed as the head of the brand-new Microsoft FSI district.? We were responsible for the top 30 or so accounts in the New York Metro area.?Under his leadership, I really had a blast and I learnt even more about how to manage highly stressful environments, especially when you are struggling making your numbers.

From there, we went from a New Metro based only organization to a US based organization, managing 300+ customers.? That was a significant reorganization as you can imagine.? That is when I became in charge of a customer success organization under David Lochridge who is still my so well appreciated leader.? With him, I added a new layer of knowledge when it comes to leadership at scale.? He was the one who appointed me General Manager of my current organization.? When Ed Fandrey left, Karen Del Vescovo took over the FSI organization and I have to say that I could not have been more fortunate with her leading us.? Her leadership style gets the best out of me every day, and I so enjoy working with/for her.? At the same time, I have the great privilege to also work with Deb Cupp who is yet another strong female leader that inspires people working for her.

Finally, I would be doomed if I did not recognize the immense help and partnership I received from HR throughout my leadership journey: Paul-Xavier Billette , Solène BALLION , Thibault Langé , Jennifer Moran, PHR, GTML , Mario Fernández Montero and Lindsay Moser ! No leader can perform effectively without a strong HR team behind him or her.

This is in a nutshell a summary of my career.

Now, if I had to summarize my 25 years at Microsoft in terms of lessons learnt, I would say:

Resilience: Microsoft taught me how to develop strong resilience.? I literally had one reorganization every single year, with some of them?pretty radical.? Change is now part of my DNA and I just embrace any change with philosophy and positivism.

Helping others for free: Throughout my career, I always helped others without asking anything in return.? I love helping others and spending time doing so.? Sometimes it is taxing on me, but I love doing it.? I do not expect anything in return.? And guess what, when I actually needed help the most (i.e. when that new GM wanted to fire me back in France), the network of people I helped throughout my career decided to help me and totally unexpectedly reached out to my hiring manager to advocate on my behalf which resulted in me getting a new job in 2 days, which was a record back then.

Understand how others are evaluated: It is beyond critical that you understand how your colleagues are evaluated in their job.? That will help you understand what is driving them and could remove a lot of frustration/misunderstanding on your end.

Taking risks: Taking risks is good for your brain and well-being.? It forces you to enter uncertain territories and helps you stimulate your brain in ways you had no clue you had in you.

Learn from your mistakes: I made a ton of mistakes during my career and during my first years, I sometimes was driven by my ego being hurt instead of self-reflecting on them.? It took a lot of great leaders to help me understand that making mistakes is OK. What is not is blaming others first, without doing any self-introspection.

Be genuine: The way I behave at work is exactly the same as the way I behave in private.? There are no surprises with me.? I strongly believe that this is key for building a strong network of allies around you which will help you get a successful career.

Enforce respect: Speak up when you see something wrong. Being passive when you witness micro-aggressions is never OK.? Of course, it comes with some risks, but you would be amazed to see that, when you speak up, you actually get support from folks around you that were just waiting for the first one to have the courage to speak up.? Be that first one!

Delegate:? During my career, I went from “It’s all about me and I’m doing it all” to “my success is through others’ successes”.? It was a very long journey to get there. But at some point, with the help of my leaders, I realized that I had nothing more to prove and I could start delegating and empowering others.? That lesson learnt helps me every day in my current position.

Don't lose track of the big picture when faced with bad managers: I had the misfortune to have bad managers, both in France and in the US. Some managers are perceived as bad, not because they are acting badly on purpose but because they are simply incompetent and should not have been given this responsibility in the first place. Once you did your due diligence and figured out that those individuals are really bad managers (i.e. it is not you being unable to control your ego), then take a look at the big picture. If you love working for your company, those bad leaders should not be the reason to leave your company. Hang in there and try to change position if you can. I know it is easier said than done but still, don't lose track of the big picture.

It was a really long post and I apologize for that, but I felt that I needed to land all this in writing.? If my experience can benefit one person, then it is all worth it.

PS: I'm pretty sure that I forgot some folks who were instrumental in my career. Please accept my apologizes as it was not intentional.