Resume (Curriculum Vitae)

- Too much to list, and I am not taking time from my retirement to update this :)

- In October 2017, while maintaining all responsibilities and teams from the previous GPM role (and shipping the new top-level product of Vcpkg), expanded the scope to manage the Python and Data Science team that was re-organized into the division.
- Co-authored the Python strategy doc for Microsoft, reviewed at the Executive Vice President (EVP) level, that resulted in acceleration of additional investment for this area.
- Through diverse hiring grew the Python Tools PM team from 1 to 14 PMs, including growing two individual contributors to become managers on the team.
- Helped the hiring and ramp up of the Python Tools engineering team which grew proportionally, and also helped the original team of engineers transition from a startup mentality to being part of a larger organization with concrete deliverables and business goals.
- Doubled the usage of the Python workload in the VS IDE and increased eightfold the usage of the Python extension in VS Code, making it the market leading free tool for the Python inner loop (up from 6% market share).
- Created the end-to-end scenarios for Python on Azure, came up with a system for identifying and tracking issues, pulled together a v-team across all of Microsoft to increase Azure’s share of the Python workloads.
- Led the team through customer interviews, analysis of surveys, competitive analysis, and general market research to come up with a holistic view and plan around Jupyter (which is at the center of the Python AI and ML workstreams) for VS Code, GitHub, and the relevant Azure services. The plan is in execution right now, including a transition for the Azure Notebooks service.
- Partnered with the Azure ML group to support their experiences in their new Studio product, as well as create a companion experience in VS Code.
- Partnered with the Windows group to enable Windows customers to easily install Python from the store (a request that was identified years ago but never managed to get actioned).
- Continued helping with various divisional initiatives, including coordinating semester planning and planning checkpoints for the entire Developer Division, and including authoring a data-driven paper with a positioning recommendation on the Rust programming language (a position that still stands to this day), and organizing the inaugural division-wide Learning Day.

Experienced the joy of growing a team almost from scratch. Learned to manage disjoint teams separately, i.e. not blending operations, constraints, resources, metrics, and goals across the distinct teams. Internalized that with a 25-person PM team managing a 200-person engineering team across various engineering directors, the majority of my time is on creating clarity on the purpose of each team, generating positive energy to empower sub-teams to own their charter, and delivering results primarily through managing relationships.

- Moved to an established team which was doing good, but not great. Clarified the group's charter and aligned the team's vision to the broader division's business goals.
- Expanded the focus of the group from satisfying existing customers to also measurably attracting new customers, including driving the launch of the C++ extension for VS Code.
- Successfully led the PM team through culture change (data driven, customer development, hypothesis-driven development) via a variety of methods and techniques.
- Collaborated effectively with my engineering counterparts leading a ~100 strong team of engineers to deliver value to C++ customers in Visual Studio and Visual Studio Code, as well as the MSVC compiler and library toolset.
- Exceeded on delivering key business metrics, including double digit % growth YoY of users from the target customer segment.
- Performed similar duties as the previous role, but at a different scale, building on the lessons learned from the previous managerial role of a team half the size.
- Shipped tremendous value for C++ developers in Visual Studio 2017 (my CppCon presentation), as well as in the MSVC toolset, and the C++ Extension to Visual Studio Code.
- Helped with various divisional initiatives, including a quality push by creating a bespoke End-to-end Test Day, driving stakeholders across the division to author scripts for the various workloads, and then coming up with a system for the rest of the division to dogfood the latest VS bits exercising those scenarios, including scoring, filing bugs, and operationalizing the system for others to subsequently execute it for future releases.

Experienced being a manager of managers, and owning the business metrics and results for a large group in the division.

- Brought organization, structure, and process to a 50-person multi-discipline core platform team that was maybe being a bit too agile, with not much written down in terms of shared understanding on the why, what, and how.
- Simplified and communicated a clear direction, and charter for up to 7 directs and also the broader team.
- Transformed the team (and its external perception) to be partner-focused and deeply customer-engaged.
- Created and executed on the vision of bringing profiling, historical tools and debugging tools together, with great customer usage and satisfaction results… pushing the state of the art in this space (with patents).
- Actively helped 3+2 direct reports find better suited roles. Hired 1 person from industry, 2 internally, and 3 from college including from previous internship. Directly managed areas during people gaps. Had fantastic MSPoll managerial results.
- Engaged frequently with marketing, and with the senior executive team to make sure the product team direction and the business direction were aligned resulting in directly influencing both sides.
- Came up with a plan, process, and executed against it to seed the main visualstudio.com website with content from the top 20 investment areas for all of Visual Studio.
- Kicked off planning for the entire Visual Studio team for the next major revision of the product.
- The features we shipped resulted in increased usage, positive sentiment, engagement, revenue, and new user acquisition for the division.
- Shipped the very first VS Emulator for Android in Preview, through CTPs, through RTM and Updates after that.
- Shipped updates to the IntelliTrace standalone collector, and with the Microsoft Monitoring Agent.
- Shipped diagnostic features in Visual Studio 2012 Update 1 through Update 5.
- Shipped diagnostic features in Visual Studio 2013 RTM, and VS2013 Update 1 through Update 5.
- Shipped diagnostic features in Visual Studio 2015 RTM and Update 1.

Learned how to be a people manager and an organizational leader, at a different scale than my previous experiences. Grew an appreciation for creating and evaluating a more direct connection of technical work to business goals, and the importance of first building trust with all interested parties.

- Conducted information gathering (via various breadth and depth mediums) from potential customers, for technologies that were being considered for inclusion in Visual Studio.
- Performed competitive analysis on both the technical and the positioning/marketing front, for technologies that were being considered for inclusion in Visual Studio.
- Helped recruit and build a team, while mentoring new engineers to the field and/or to the technologies we were working on, and maintained a high morale throughout inevitable organizational and other changes taking place.
- Defined scenarios and new features, and followed through with specifications and walkthroughs to guide the rest of the engineering team to build the desired capabilities for the Visual Studio product.
- Fostered numerous internal (other groups, but also LCA, UE, UX) and external relationships (customers and partners), driving towards common goals, framed as win-win situations.
- Shipped Visual Studio 2010 with parallel debugging features for multi-core and cluster technologies.
- Shipped Visual Studio 2012 with enhanced parallel debugging features for CPU and also added support for new GPGPU scenarios.
- Also in VS2012, shipped C++ AMP, a new C++ programming model for accessing GPUs for compute purposes with integration with the C++ (fronteend and backend) compiler, standalone library and runtime, plus IDE integration. As part of the project kicked off ancillary codeplex open source libraries, managing a vendor.
- Gave dozens of presentations introducing the technologies I shipped to early adopters, created screencasts, wrote blog posts, and wrote articles and other such outreach activities. Provided support to customers through msdn forums and various Visual Studio programs leading to case studies and adoption.

Brought together a range of skills from (literally all) my previous roles in order to succeed on the PM role. In addition, I added new technical and soft skills to my tool belt. Mastered what it takes to be successful and deliver as an IC (Individual Contributor) feature PM at Microsoft.

- Quickly learnt new technologies on my own such as Windows Vista, .NET Framework v3.x, Silverlight 2, Visual Studio 2008, Windows Server 2008, 2007 Office System (VSTO and SharePoint), mobility.
- Delivered over 100 domestic developer sessions at regional MSDN and user group events.
- Contributed in organisation and delivery of large domestic launch events for Windows Vista, 2007 Office System, Visual Studio 2008 and 3 UK MSDN Roadshows.
- Presented at international events outside the UK (MEDC, Tech Ed, DevWeek, DevFest, DevDays, QCon, TechReady) in places like Amsterdam, Athens, Berlin, Barcelona, Eilat, Las Vegas, Seattle and Orlando.
- Recorded 37 (10-30 minutes) screencasts and delivered a 1-hour webcast.
- Increased my blogging frequency and quality.
- In addition to my blog, I authored articles for magazines (MSDN, TechNet, VSj, QBS) and also the Mobile Development Handbook.
- Became editor of the UK MSDN newsletter and radically revamped it with huge success.
- It was my pleasure to assist the Audience Marketing team and the UK MVP team with their goals, e.g. nominating MVPs, participating in community leader days and generally being Mr. Community.

Learnt how to continue being a techie in the world of developer marketing. Fine-tuned my presentation skills and picked up new ones around content creation both in media and text.

- End customer was a leading online media company. This was a short assignment troubleshooting an existing implementation. Worked with WordML and the Word automation model via C#. Refactored the solution while collaborating with the existing offshore developers and leading a team of 3 in the UK.
- Client was a worldwide leader in the music industry. Developed the global intranet portal using Sharepoint Portal Services on Windows Server 2003. The role involved capturing the client's requirements and leading a team that created the site definitions (xml, aspx, css, js), list templates (stp, cab) and custom webparts in C#. Deployment scripts covering the aforementioned SharePoint parts were used to deliver the final package.
- Various business development support (conference calls with potential clients, RFPs, review of proposed project plans, interviewing candidates etc).

Gained valuable consultancy experience while working with technologies I hadn't worked before. Learned to work with new technologies that I have no interest in and still deliver on time, to spec and within budget to high profile customers.

Worked online with the other owners and advisors to the board to architect and implement the award-winning Smart Device Framework (a complement to the .NET Compact Framework). Helped shape the commercial form of OpenNETCF in terms of approach, style, general internal processes, external image, as well as product ideas. Was privileged to be part of a select team of recognised experts in their field.

Obtained first-hand proof that geographically dispersed teams can collaborate effectively and deliver quality products.

Highlights of the Numerous projects include:
- Implemented a suite of blind COM communications components (design in UML / Rose).
- Authored a bunch of ActiveX controls for our plug-in architecture application.
- Initiated and co-created the department’s coding style & UI guidelines documents.
- Being R&D’s .NET expert/evangelist, upgraded the comms suite to .NET (inc. COM Interop access for existing clients, and inc. targeting the .NET Compact Framework).
- IQView, a NETCF embedded display panel app running 24x7 on our WinCE-based hardware.

Was involved in engineering software at every stage of the life-cycle and developed skills in a range of tools & techniques that support each stage. Interfacing with other departments (e.g. Marketing, Tech Support, Tech Pubs, QA etc) contributed to making me a professional.

Project title: "To disseminate UML and best OO practices into Trend, ESSER, Novar and Gent" Incl: Understanding the current development techniques employed within the four companies. Teaching and mentoring. Researching the most suitable CASE tools available. Evolving of a suitable methodology that can be followed by each company. Prepared and presented a 2-day UML Seminar to developers of 5 companies

As well as solidifying my UML and OO knowledge, my research and presentation skills were improved immensely. Gaining business awareness was an added bonus.

Was solely responsible (helpdesk) for a large area containing VAX terminals, UNIX workstations and stand-alone PCs, all running a great number of different applications. Provided technical support to users whose computing literacy ranged from none to expert.

This job required a significant deal of patience and communication skills.

Was working within the Intelligent Systems unit whose role was to provide computing software for other departments in BT. Developed and collaborated in development of computing software in an Object-Oriented environment, using the NeXTSTEP tools and Objective C.

Grew more adaptable to changes. Improved my time management skills. Gained experience in Object-Oriented development and realised that OO is the way to go!

Performed at school and house parties, both on stage and ‘close-up’ magic (tricks) to audiences ranging from 1-200 people. Also appeared on national Greek TV (on the ET3 channel).

Built self-confidence and strengthened my interpersonal skills.

Worked in an office in an Italian factory translating from Greek to English for my employer. Operated the ‘weight bridge’ when trucks came in or went out the factory. Was responsible for the workers and conducting their payroll. Assisted users of a software package in the accountancy department with data entry.

Was taught discipline and managing my responsibilities. Developed diplomacy skills as I was interacting with different kinds of people, unskilled workers, people in the office, businesspersons, farmers etc.